Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Windows onto warmer worlds: sea ice, nutrient utilisation, and primary production on the Wilkes Land margin, Antarctica
Recipient(s): Dr CR Riesselman | PI | University of Otago
Dr RS Robinson | AI | University of Rhode Island
Dr R Van Hale | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is generally accepted to act as a stable, permanent feature of the Antarctic cryosphere, however diverse lines of evidence suggest that its marine margin is prone to retreat during episodes of global warmth. The ice sheet is grounded below sea level on the Wilkes Land margin, making this a promising location from which to develop records of maximum EAIS sensitivity to past warm climates.
Earth has not experienced the level of warmth predicted for the coming century since the late Pliocene, ~3 million years ago. We will assess Pliocene East Antarctic sea ice and primary productivity, which respond directly to changes in climate and ice sheet proximity, from two marine sediment cores recovered from the Wilkes Land margin. We will apply a paired proxy approach, using (1) the established environmental affinities of diatom assemblages to reconstruct sea ice, open water, and stratification, and (2) the stable isotopic composition of diatom-bearing sediments to reconstruct biogeochemical cycling. This reconstruction will address key uncertainties in the potential for a sensitive portion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to be destabilized by the level of warming anticipated to result from anthropogenic CO2 release.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr CR Riesselman
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 13-UOO-189
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Winners and losers: effects of demographic heterogeneity on individual fitness and the dynamics of marine metapopulations
Recipient(s): Assoc Prof JS Shima | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr EG Noonburg | AI | Florida Atlantic University
Assoc Prof SE Swearer | AI | University of Melbourne
Public Summary: Many species produce excess offspring, and most individuals will die before they can reproduce. Such reproductive 'losers' may persist in populations for extended periods, to shape evolution and exact unknown costs on individuals that successfully breed (i.e., winners). The importance of 'survival of the fittest' is well recognised across biological disciplines, but what are the consequences of losers, which can compete for resources, attract predators, and alter the fates of winners? Since Darwin’s seminal work, existing paradigms have been preoccupied with winners; reproductive losers are rarely a focus of investigation. Our previous research on a small marine fish indicates that losers may be created when young individuals experience unfavourable conditions early in their developmental history. Our novel approaches have enabled us to unlock the 'environmental fingerprints' and demographic records preserved within fish ear bones, to conclude that: (i) young fish developing in offshore waters acquire distinct traits that transform them into losers; (ii) losers regularly colonise reefs alongside winners; and (iii) losers may be more readily shuffled between distant populations. We propose to integrate experiments, a longitudinal study, demographic reconstructions from ear bones, and mathematical modelling to reveal, for the first time, the hidden consequences of losers on winners.
Total Awarded: $800,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Assoc Prof JS Shima
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 12-VUW-009
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Winning elections in Ancient Rome: ideology and practice
Recipient(s): Professor WJ Tatum | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Public Summary: During the Roman republic, annual elections determined the membership of the senatorial aristocracy, which means that the political foundations of every larger thematic issue in Rome’s civic culture resided in the dynamics of canvassing for office. Issues of personality and leadership were paramount, since Rome operated without political parties. The public rituals of campaigning, involving Romans of every social class, were deemed vital to social consensus and even to the empire’s international stability. The manifold practices whereby the elite won the votes of the lower orders, as well as the ideologies underlying these practices, await a comprehensive treatment. This project will explain canvassing in the Roman republic by way of an investigation of its literary, documentary and material traces, concentrating on a first century BCE text, the Commentariolum Petitionis, our most important evidence for canvassing in republican Rome. The result will be the first scholarly commentary on this work in any language, which will unpack its implications for recovering the realities of Roman electoral campaigns and advance our understanding of an institution that is essential for grasping the political nature of late republican society – a society that remains a model for contemporary constitutional theorists and political philosophers.
Total Awarded: $275,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Professor WJ Tatum
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 14-VUW-194
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: World Wide Weta: digital workshop of the world and New Zealand's cultural economy
Recipient(s): Dr L Gurevitch | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Public Summary: Following Weta Digital’s rise to global prominence there have been studies that consider the company’s impact upon New Zealand and Hollywood. Less commonly studied has been the workforce that Weta employs. Fundamental questions such as Weta’s relationship to other visual industries (advertising, music, animation, games) and the ways in which audiovisual producers, technologies and products interact remain to be investigated. If Weta is the digital workshop of the world, the question is not what kind of movies it helps produce, but what kind of workers it attracts, disseminates and how their mobility benefit the company and New Zealand’s cultural economy.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Dr L Gurevitch
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 11-VUW-154
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900-1975.
Recipient(s): Associate Professor A Te Punga Somerville | PI | University of Waikato
Public Summary: We know that many Indigenous peoples first encountered alphabetic writing in the 18th and 19th centuries, and we are familiar with the widely-recognised ‘firsts’ of Indigenous literary publications from the 1970s, but what came in between?
‘Writing the new world’ will identify, locate and analyse Indigenous publications in periodicals (newspapers/ magazines) and in literary genres (novels, poetry, plays, biography) in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Hawai'i between 1900 and 1975.
As well as exploring the diverse Indigenous experiences and histories of Indigenous publishing across these four sites, the research will trace the transnational and regional connections between Indigenous people during this time. As the first scholarly engagement with several periodicals and the first scholarly treatment of a range of literary texts languishing out-of-print or in archives, the research aims to make visible a wide range of little-known documents and texts for the wider use of scholars and communities.
The early- and mid-twentieth century was a period of massive change for Indigenous peoples worldwide that remains under-examined in all disciplines. Through publications, capacity building and community engagement, the research challenges restrictive characterizations of twentieth-century Indigenous experiences that focus on rupture and loss by emphasizing Indigenous resilience, agency, continuity, creativity and dynamism.
Total Awarded: $642,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Waikato
Contact Person: Associate Professor A Te Punga Somerville
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 17-UOW-030
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: You can't go home again: forensic evidence for changes in ecosystem function following mainland extinction of pinnipeds
Recipient(s): Dr LC Wing | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Loss of Earth’s biodiversity caused by humans disrupts ecological processes and
destabilizes ecosystems. Human impacts on ecosystems can result in food webs
becoming shorter, less complex and less stable. To restore the health of New Zealand’s
marine ecosystem we need to know what it was like before human contact and how it has
changed. For example, fur seals and sea lions were once common around our coasts but
were hunted down to remnant populations at the very margins of their range. Now their
populations are returning, but can they fit back in? Apex predators such as seals and sea
lions are food web integrators: discovering changes in their trophic position can reveal
changes in the structure of the whole food web on which they rely. As the last major land
mass settled by humans, New Zealand harbours a uniquely well-preserved record of
human exploitation, readily discernible from archaeological records. We will use forensic
analysis of a time-series of fur seal and sea lion bones from archaeological deposits to
describe the structure of prehistoric marine food webs and to track changes in ecosystem
structure, from the advent of human exploitation in New Zealand to the modern day.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr LC Wing
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 13-UOO-235
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Young adults, drinking stories and the cult of celebrity
Recipient(s): Dr AC Lyons | PI | Massey University
Dr F Hutton | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr TN McCreanor | PI | Massey University
Dr IR Goodwin | AI | Massey University
Professor CE Griffin | AI | University of Bath
Dr H Moewaka-Barnes | AI | Massey University
Dr KG Vroman | AI | University of New Hampshire
Public Summary: Young adults in NZ regularly engage in heavy drinking and subsequently tell (and re-tell) drinking stories, increasingly via new social networking technologies (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, YouTube). These online sites enable individuals to provide personal information, often about drinking experiences, similar to media accounts of drunken celebrities. This research aims to investigate how young adults' identities are created through their drinking practices, cultures, and online material. The research will involve group discussions, individual interviews, and analyses of popular drinking stories/images on the Internet. Results will further our understanding of young adults, drinking cultures and new media technologies in contemporary NZ society.
Total Awarded: $768,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Dr AC Lyons
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 09-MAU-117
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: Young versus mature neurons: competition for the representation of memory
Recipient(s): Prof WC Abraham | PI | University of Otago
Dr SM Hughes | AI | University of Otago
Prof JW Lynch | AI | The University of Queensland
Public Summary: The neural processes of memory storage are not well understood. It is notable, however, that the hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory, is one of only two regions where new nerve cells are generated throughout life. The precise role of these new nerve cells in memory is unclear, largely due to an inability to selectively manipulate their activity. Here we will develop the critical molecular technology for selectively and reversibly silencing new nerve cells during an animal’s performance of memory tasks. We will genetically modify cells newly generated in adult mice with a protein that inhibits their activity when the animals are given ivermectin. We will then use ivermectin to silence these cells during memory storage or retrieval to assess their importance for memory. A second series of experiments will compare the participation of older and newer nerve cells in the neural circuitry for memory storage by monitoring their activity during learning, and after “waking them up” with a variety of experimental procedures. Overall, these experiments will provide important new insights into how nerve cells compete for involvement in memory storage. The new genetic technology also has great potential for broader applications in understanding how the brain controls behaviour.
Total Awarded: $856,522
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Prof WC Abraham
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 11-UOO-125
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: “The land has eyes and teeth”: customary landowners’ entanglements with economic systems in the Pacific
Recipient(s): Professor RA Scheyvens | PI | Massey University
Associate Professor GA Banks | AI | Massey University
Dr LD Meo-Sewabu | AI | Massey University
Professor V Naidu | AI | University of the South Pacific
Public Summary: External commentators regularly assert that customary practices around land are a ‘constraint’ to economic development in the Pacific. This project turns this proposition on its head, exploring how Pacific communities have been able to establish distinctive models of engagement that allow them to pursue economic development while retaining control over customary land and upholding community processes and values. While land is conventionally understood as a commodity, we draw upon the notion of land as ‘assemblage’ (Li 2014) which counters this narrow economistic perspective. Pacific people view land in a holistic manner which embraces cultural, social and spiritual elements. Implicitly “the land has eyes and teeth” points to people’s deep understanding of the power of the land and its ‘mana’, which demands respect. This fundamentally influences how customary land development is negotiated. Our project seeks to explore the diverse relationships that adhere around such business engagements to illuminate what makes for success for businesses on customary land. A scoping survey will help to identify four case studies of successful cooperatives and family businesses which will be researched, utilising a Vanua Research Framework and Critical Appreciative Inquiry. We anticipate that our research will construct a new way of theorising Pacific economies.
Total Awarded: $735,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Professor RA Scheyvens
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 16-MAU-113