Our research

Maartje Abbenhuis is a historian of war, peace, neutrality and internationalism, particularly in Europe in the period 1815 - 1919. She has published several monographs, including The Art of Staying Neutral. The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914 - 1918 (Amsterdam University Press, 2006); An Age of Neutrals. Great Power Politics 1815 - 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award; The Hague Conferences in International Politics 1898-1915 (Bloomsbury, 2018); and (with Gordon Morrell) The First Age of Industrial Globalisation: An International History 1815-1918 (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is working on another co-authored monograph with Prof. Ismee Tames, entitled Global War, Global Catastrophe: Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformation of the First World War (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2020).

She is the recipient of two Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grants: one in 2004 for work on the borderlands of the Netherlands in the First World War and the other in 2014 for her Hague conferences project. In 2018, she spent a semester as a Residential Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in Amsterdam. She has co-edited five academic collections: three with her colleague Dr Sara Buttsworth: Restaging War in the Western World. Non-Combatant Experiences 1890 - Today (Palgrave 2009); Monsters in the Mirror. Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture (Praeger, 2010); War, Myths and Fairy Tales (Palgrave, 2017); and one with Chris Barber and Annalise Higgins, War, Peace and International Order. The Legacies of the Hague Peace Conferences of 1898 and 1907 (Routledge, 2017). Her latest co-edited collection The Myriad Legacies of 1917: A Year of War and Revolution (Palgrave, 2018) was the product of an interdisciplinary international symposium held in Wellington in 2017.

Mark Amsler currently is researching European and EU discourses related to multilingualism and European political and cultural integration in the shadow of growing ethnic nationalism, immigration conflict, and BREXIT. With Cris Shore and Sarah Amsler he has published research on the politics of the university in the time of "fast capitalism." Mark was director of the Europe Institute from 2014-2018.

Jeremy Armstrong is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Auckland. His primary research are focused on archaic Italy and early Rome (late Bronze Age through the Middle Republic). However, they also include the wider history and archaeology of the Roman Republic, the formation and development of ancient states around the Mediterranean, ancient warfare, historiography, and the application of modern sociological and anthropological theory to ancient societies. He is currently working on several projects related to early Roman warfare, military equipment, and Roman expansion.

James N. Bade is Emeritus Professor of German language and literature at the University of Auckland and is based in Wellington. He has published extensively on German literature (particularly Theodor Fontane and Thomas Mann) and the German connection within the Pacific. In Fontane studies he is best known for his book Fontane’s Landscapes (Würzburg, 2009), a theme which he is continuing with a study on the Stralau landscapes in Fontane’s works, and he has contributed a key chapter on Fontane’s changing attitude to war in the Fontane bicentenary volume Fontane in the Twenty-First Century, edited by John B. Lyon of the University of Pittsburgh and Brian Tucker of Wabash College, which was launched at the international Fontane Conference at the University of Potsdam in June 2019. In recent years his Pacific research has focussed on the German connection with Tonga and Samoa. He is co-editor of a forthcoming critical edition of Frieda Zieschank’s German Samoan diaries 1906-1916, and is giving a paper in July 2019 at the “Monarchy at the Age of Empire” conference at Flinders University, Adelaide, which will discuss the impact on Tongan sovereignty of the 1876 Treaty of Friendship between Germany and Tonga.

Professor Lisa Bailey is currently working on a project entitled: ‘Servants of God, Slaves of the Church: The Rhetoric and Realities of Service in Early Medieval Europe’. This project, which is funded by a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden grant, explores the conjunction between the metaphor of service as religious piety in the early medieval church, with the social reality that religious institutions and individuals were reliant upon and exploited the service of people without power.

Branka Bogdan is currently completing her doctoral dissertation which focuses on the regulation of reproduction in socialist Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1989. By analysing different topics within the broader theme of reproduction, Branka traces Yugoslavia’s Soviet bloc beginnings, through the state’s burgeoning relationship with Western powers and their cultural products, to the country’s leadership’s entanglement with multilateral humanitarian organisations and countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Branka is completing her dissertation remotely through Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, though she gained her undergraduate and Masters qualifications in History at the University of Auckland. Her latest publication from her current work is "Cold war entanglements and abortion technology: Writing Yugoslavia into the Global history of vacuum aspiration,” Australian Journal of History and Politics 64, 3 (2018), 407-421.

Dr Klaus Bosselmann is Professor of Environmental Law and Founding Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law at the University of Auckland. His special expertise is in the areas of international and European environmental law, global governance and comparative constitutional law. He has recently drafted the Hague Principles for Responsibilities for human Rights and Earth Trusteeship (adopted on 10 December 2018 in the Peace Palace, The Hague) and is currently advising the United Nations on the proposal for a Global Pact for the Environment and on the implementation of the Hague Principles.

Professor Bosselmann has authored 15 books, edited further 15 books and written over 100 articles in the areas of environmental ethics and law, political ecology, international environmental law and global governance.

James Braund is an Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Auckland’s School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics. His research focuses primarily on the various past and present connections between German-speaking Europe and the Pacific, with a special emphasis on the German scientific interest in the Pacific prior to World War I. Other more general areas of research interest include the European exploration of the Pacific c. 1730-1860; science history; environmental history; and German literature from Sturm und Drang to the present day. He is currently working on a series of articles re-examining the natural history fieldwork of Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798) and his son George (1754-1794), the official naturalists on James Cook’s second Pacific voyage.

Logan has recently finished her Masters of Conflict and Terrorism Studies at the University of Auckland. Originally from Canada, SHE HAS been in NZ for just over a year. Her research interests are in politics and security in Eastern Europe, specifically in the former republics of the Soviet Union. She has recently completed two Masters Dissertations: the first examines explanations for the difference in levels of peace between Estonia and Ukraine in the post-Soviet era, the second looks at methodologies for identifying foreign fighters in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this year, Logan compiled a report on domestic political, foreign policy, and security issues in Estonia for the King's College London War Studies simulation on Russian aggression.

An is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law where she researches in international law. She is currently working on a research project on the concept of good neighbourliness in international law, that explores the potential of this concept as a foundation for legal restrictions on states’ sovereign decisions in a world characterised by increasing interdependence. She is also co-editing a book on International Law in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Geoff Kemp's main research interests embrace the history of ideas, argument and events concerning freedom of expression, liberty of the press, censorship, toleration, and the relationship of the state and the public in past political thought. Geoff’s current research focuses on John Locke and his circle, and on book and press history, principally in early-modern Britain and Ireland. His recent publications include an introduction to Locke's 'Writings on Liberty of the Press' in J. R. Milton, Geoff Kemp, et al, John Locke: Literary and Historical Writings (Oxford, 2019), a volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke; and ‘Locke the Censor, Locke the Anti-Censor’, in Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, 2019). He presented a paper on ‘John Locke and Elie Bouhéreau’ at the conference, ‘Elie Bouhéreau and the World of the Huguenots’, in Dublin in late 2019.

Bernadette Luciano has currently delivered lectures and published on what has been called the new Italian realism, a filmmaking style and practice situated between documentary and fiction cinema which explores innovative ways to engage with and bring to the screen pressing social issues and marginalized realities. She is also working on a new project on cinema and censorship, and continues to publish in the area of gender and the Italian film industry, film adaptation, and contemporary cinema and documentary, contemporary Italian literature and culture.

Jin Koo is currently working on his master's thesis under the supervision of Professor Maartje Abbenhuis. His research topic is “Barbed wire as a cultural symbol in Cold War Berlin. The research draws on archival material including surviving records of the activities of the East German Ministry for State Security" (Stasi).

Nicole is a Senior Lecturer in German in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics. Prior to the University of Auckland, Nicole spent five years at the University of Vienna in the Institute of German as a postdoctoral fellow. Her research interests are centred around German images of North American Indigenous peoples and contemporary Indigenous reappropriations. She has recently published an article on Indigenous reappropriations of the German "Indianer" image and a forthcoming chapter coming out in the William F. Cody Series from Oklahoma University Press on Buffalo Bill in Germany. Nicole also has an added interest in German women writing the Pacific from 1890-1920.

Steven Poelhekke is professor of economics at the University of Auckland, and affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Tinbergen Institute, CESifo in Munich, and OxCarre in Oxford. He previously worked at the Dutch central bank. His research interests cover International Trade and Investment, and their intersections with Development and Environmental Economics. He has studied, among other topics: the local impact of mining on infrastructure and the tradeable sector, the persistence of foreign direct investment benefits for domestic firms in developing countries, and the effects of resource wealth and multinational banks on foreign direct investment. He is a Dutch national and holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. He has published among others in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and the European Economic Review. Columns and policy pieces have appeared on VoxEU.org, the LSE Business Review and Economisch Statistische Berichten.

Professor Elizabeth Rata is Director of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit (KERU) in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. Her research is in two main areas. The first is into the politics of ethnicity. Her expertise was recognised with her ‘Ethnic Revival’ contribution to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. Her second research field is about knowledge in education. This has led to the development of the Curriculum Design Coherence Model, a teaching design tool for use by teachers in all education sectors, including the university. An account of the CDC Model and its theoretical justification is available in the latest British Educational Research Journal. Her two research areas have proved mutually generative enabling her to contribute to the growing discussion in New Zealand about what type of knowledge should be included in the university. An example of the robust nature of this debate is in the latest issue of the Waikato Journal of Education.

Stefano Riela is research fellow at the Europe Institute of the University of Auckland, lecturer of Economics of European Union at Bocconi University (Milan, Italy). He was coordinator of the course in EU Competition Policy and lecturer of EU economic policies at ISPI. He was economic advisor at the Communications Regulatory Authority in Italy (AGCOM), faculty coordinator at NIBI (New International Business Institute, Milan Chamber of Commerce), research director at Fondazione ResPublica, and consultant of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs during the Italian Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2003.

He holds a PhD in International Economic Law (Bocconi University), a Master in Economic Regulation and Competition (City University, London), a Master in International Relations (ULB-Ceris, Brussels) and a BA in Business Administration (Bocconi University). His research interests cover economic integration, trade, economic regulation and competition policy.

Cris Shore is professor of Anthropology and Head of Department at Goldsmiths University of London. His main research field is political anthropology, particularly the study of power, organisations and processes of social transformation. A long-time analyst of European politics and EU institutions, his other major research specialisms include the Anthropology of Policy, corruption, the study of higher education reform, and the rise of ‘audit culture’.

Between 2018-2019 he was Guest Professor of Public Management at the Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research (SCORE) where he developed further research interests in the way marketisation, New Public Management and ideologies of ‘leadership’ are re-purposing public sector organisations, particularly universities. He is currently writing up for publication a lecture entitled ‘Why Does Every Attempt to Manage Universities Make Them Worse?’ He is also currently completing a new book (with Susan Wright) entitled Audit Culture: How Indicators and Rankings are Transforming Our World, which examines how the calculative logics of economics, finance, enumeration and performance are being used as instruments of local and global governance. His most recent book (with David V. Williams) is The Shapeshifting Crown: Locating the State in Postcolonial Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

I am a social anthropologist whose primary research areas are the body, citizenship, and subjectivity, with a geographic focus on the Czech Republic. My most recent project has been a phenomenologically-inspired, ethnographic examination of our ways of seeing, experiencing, and moving through the world and the kinds of persons we become through them, a process I refer to as traversing. Drawing from philosophical concepts developed by two continental philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jan Patočka, and putting them in conversation with ethnographic analysis of the lives of contemporary Czechs, this project examines how embodiment is crucial for understanding our being-in-the-world. In particular, I examine three kinds of movements we make as embodied actors in the world: how we move through time and space, be it by walking along city streets, gliding across the dance floor, or clicking our way across digital landscapes; how we move towards and away from one another, as erotic partners, family members, or fearful, ethnic “others;” and how we move towards ourselves and the earth we live upon. The project has culminated in a sole-authored monograph, Traversing: Bodies, Technologies and Culture in the Czech Republic, which is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.

Prior to this, I conducted research on the politics of childhood asthma in New Zealand and the Czech Republic. Supported in part by a grant from the New Zealand Asthma Foundation, I engaged in a cross-cultural comparison of how neoliberal reforms are redefining patienthood – in particular, how we allocate personal and collective responsibility over health, care, and the environment – and the effects of these changes on children’s health and wellbeing. My book on this topic, One Blue Child: Asthma, Responsibility, and the Politics of Global Health, was published by Stanford University Press in 2017.

Peter published in a range of journals in international business, management, business administration and economics. He is an editorial review board member of International Journal of Emerging Markets (Emerald Publishing). His research focuses on foreign direct investment, foreign market entry modes and global innovation. Peter co-authored Contemporary International Business in the Asia-Pacific Region (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and a number of book chapters and cases published by Cambridge University Press and SAGE Publications. He was quoted by Wall Street Journal and BBC.

Ayelet Zoran-Rosen has been a member of the Europe Institute at The University of Auckland since 2015 and is currently an honorary research fellow at the school of humanities. Her research deals with the incorporation of Bosnia into the Ottoman Empire and the processes of Ottomanization and Islamization that accompanied this integration. Her recent publication focuses on the role played by educational institutions in the process of Bosnian integration into the Ottoman Empire.