Vā Moana operates as a diverse, wide-reaching, and resilient research cluster at AUT and in Moananui that provides a culturally supportive academic environment for postgraduate students as much as emerging and established researchers.
It helps young Māori and Moananui researchers to find their feet in the academy, by developing shared questions and themes through international reading groups and vā kōrero sessions involving postgraduate students, international visitors, collaborators, interested colleagues, and artists and members of wider communities.
Postgraduate research, often involving affiliates from elsewhere in AUT and beyond, mostly explores Indigenous ways of knowing in Moananui. Interweaving research and pedagogies, we take a holistic, collective approach. This also manifests in our MPhil and PhD supervisions and collective events like our reading groups and vā kōrero.