The research question for this platform project are:

Rakiura Māori muttonbirders and researchers collaborated to build and test a computer-based decision support package to allow individual kaitiaki to choose optimal harvesting strategies on their own whānau’s ancestral birding ground.

In addition to public and scholarly deliberations regarding increased inequalities in society, this project responds to the continued socio-economic exclusion of many Māori households.

We draw on recent scholarship on the precariat as an emerging social class comprised of people experiencing unstable employment, unliveable incomes, inadequate state supports, marginalisation and stigma. Our focus is on the Māori precariat, whose rights are being eroded through punitive labour and welfare reforms.

While we document issues of employment, food, housing and cultural insecurities shaping precarious lives, we also develop a focus on household connections, practices and strengths. This focus is important because connections, practices and strengths can buffer whānau against adversity for a time, render aspects of their lives more liveable, and enable human flourishing.

Project purpose
To investigate the mechanisms controlling the timing of behaviour of the marine isopod Eurylana (the sea louse) over the tidal cycle and to collect preliminary data on the phase responsivenessof the tidal clock to artificial tides.