UC Research Repository
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The UC Research Repository collects, stores and makes available original research from postgraduate students, researchers and academics based at the University of Canterbury.
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Recent Submissions
The resilience paradox : a critical analysis of the Aotearoa New Zealand-Pacific partnership for climate crisis resilience building.
(2024) Bland, Lauren
Resilience has become a prominent term utilised in climate and development policy and programming to describe the intersection between disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation and development (Bahadur et al. 2013). Resilience is quickly becoming a catch-all term that promises solutions to the complex and interlacing challenges presented by the climate crisis and failing global sustainable development objectives. However, the term lacks a universal definition, meaning it is often understood and applied differently across disciplines and contexts.
As Pacific Island Countries and Territories continue to face the escalating consequences of the climate crisis, many development partners such as Aotearoa New Zealand are centring the concept of resilience within their objectives towards the Pacific. Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2021 foreign policy direction titled the Resilience Approach, frames resilience as the key to empowering Pacific Island Countries and Territories to navigate the escalating challenges arising from the climate crisis, economic instability and increasing geopolitical pressures. This research analyses the dynamics of climate crisis resilience building within the context of the Aotearoa New Zealand-Pacific partnership. It critically analyses the varying complexities and subjectivities within climate resilience policy and programming discourse, to gain a deeper understanding of its practical impacts within resilience implementation. This research highlights diverging conceptualisations of resilience between Aotearoa-New Zealand and Pacific actors, hidden power dynamics inherent within development partnerships, and challenges involved in translating policy rhetoric into meaningful action.
The central finding of this research is the ‘resilience paradox’ which describes several contradictions present within the Aotearoa New Zealand-Pacific partnership in terms of climate resilience building, and in the broader context of development partnerships. What this paradox illustrates is there is importance in a process of collaborative reflection on what climate crisis resilience means in different contexts and how this understanding can be effectively applied in practice.
The implications of this research suggest that resilience approaches benefit most from being contextually grounded and culturally responsive. There is rich opportunity when partners engage in a collaborative process of shared learning that honours diverse knowledge systems. For genuine resilience outcomes, this research finds that all partners must engage in a process of meaningful transformative change.
Publics and purse strings: the South Island Art Project and funding dynamics in 1990s Aotearoa
(2024) Tuffnell, Uma
This thesis explores the role that public funding played in shaping the trajectory
and output of the South Island Art Projects, a short-lived Arts Council initiated
and funded contemporary arts organisation that produced a series of art
projects in public space from 1992 to 1996 against a backdrop of funding
shortages and turbulent funding policy change. My research looks at the ways
shifting funding criteria played into the formation and structure of the SIAP
organisation, the location, timing and focus of three key projects, and the
organisation’s unexpected loss of funding in 1995. Asserting that, the funding
dynamic brings with it certain challenges that alter the way arts organisations
like SIAP operate, and that these influences are amplified where funding
requirements shift within a short period of time.
The three key project case studies explored in this thesis, Public Practices
(1993), Tales Untold (1994), and PRAXIS (1995), highlight different approaches
SIAP took to navigating Arts Council funding requirements, working within
public space and serving artist interests. They narrow in on moments where
SIAP resisted Arts Council expectations within their own programming, overtly
or covertly attempted to pursue an independent path, or set aside this approach
and pursued alignment. Throughout this writing the SIAP organisation is
framed as a project that was vulnerable to broader forces and an outcome of a
specific funding structure, yet also strongly resistant towards external
influence. The group’s management of funding restrictions aligns closely with
theorist Isobel Lorey’s approach to navigating instrumentalism, which suggests
management is less about changing the broader system and more about
attempting to find “where, within these governing mechanisms, cracks and
potentials for resistance are to be found”.
Performance enhancement of an Ag-Au bimetallic SPR sensor
(2024) Babu , Roshni S.; Colenso , Hamish R.; Gouws , Gideon J.; Auguié , Baptiste; Moore, Ciaran
Development of SPR biosensor using a customized experimental setup
(2019) Babu , Roshni W.; Moore, Ciaran; Gouws , Gideon; Auguié , Baptise
Shape Shifting Device for Plant Condition Monitoring and Control
(2023) Agnieray , Heiana; Lv , Yifan; Singamneni , Sarat; Moore, Ciaran; Wakelin , Steve