MᾹORI SCHOLARS AND THE UNIVERSITY.

The purpose of this report is to review the findings of a two-year project, Māori Academic socialization and the university, funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (2014-2015). The principal investigators on this report were Joanna Kidman and Cherie Chu (Te Kura Māori, Victoria University of Wellington). The study explored the ways that Māori and Pacific senior scholars became academics; how they shape their interactions and relationships with their institutions of higher learning; how they engage with their disciplines; and, how they transform academic knowledge in ways that support and sustain their cultural and tribal communities as well as contribute to national development. The project also investigates the institutional challenges experienced by Māori and Pacific faculty who work within universities and Wānanga. Over a two-year period, the investigators conducted a qualitative, ethnographic study that included 43 participants (comprising 29 Māori participants and 14 Pacific participants) who were senior academics (i.e. senior lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor) based in a range of disciplines in the sciences, humanities, social sciences and professional and applied disciplines. The participants were located in nine PhD-granting tertiary institutions in New Zealand; a small amount of comparative data were collected from senior scholars in two universities in the Pacific region.