R OYA L S O C I E T Y T E A PĀ R A N G I
World-class research SUPPORTED BY MARSDEN FUND Te Pūtea Rangahau a Marsden, allocated $84.751 million (excluding GST) to 134 research projects led by researchers in Aotearoa in the 2020 funding round. These grants support excellent New Zealand research in the humanities, science, maths, social sciences and engineering. The grants are distributed over three years and are fully costed, paying for salaries, students and postdoctoral positions, institutional overheads and research consumables. This year one large interdisciplinary project received a Marsden Fund Council Award worth $3 million (excluding GST) to look at the link between asthma in young children in Aotearoa and biodiversity. Marsden Fund Fast-Start grants support early career researchers to develop independent research and build exceptional careers in New Zealand. In 2020, there were 59 recipients of Fast-Start grants. Projects include topics such as the impacts of transracial adoption on identity and wellbeing for Māori adoptees and their descendants; how toxic metal accumulation affects the brain of honeybees and hive health; the causes of the dramatic decline of smoking, drinking and drug use among New Zealand teens; and what the patterns of trade and husbandry of domestic animals tell us about the interactions and movements of people throughout the Western Pacific.
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Established research leaders and their teams were awarded 74 Marsden Fund grants. The research projects address a range of issues of both local and international importance including studying the impacts of Australian bushfires on New Zealand glacial environments; understanding the early universe through newly developed computational techniques; investigating whether ‘upzoning’ will make housing more affordable; using MRI to measure pressure on the brain; and transforming the Sport for Development field through the inclusion of Indigenous and feminist voices. The engagement with mātauranga Māori was recognised across discipline areas. Some examples include investigating how Māori food realities and kaupapa (values and principles) can shape discussions about what we eat, how we obtain it and how we value it; finding out why Māori make their electoral roll choice and exploring Māori views on whether they see Māori electorates as a means of asserting Māori sovereignty or as a legacy of colonial rule; and developing a theory of anti-racism based on both kaupapa Māori theory and Western paradigms to address racism and Māori health inequities in New Zealand’s health system.
“New Zealanders are world leaders in many research areas and the Marsden Fund plays a critical role in ensuring that we continue to have expertise available in these fields. Furthermore, Marsden Fund support enhances connectivity between researchers, both nationally and internationally, while also facilitating the engagement between researchers and their communities.” PROFESSOR DAVID BILKEY, MARSDEN FUND COUNCIL CHAIR
