I am a Māori woman who weeps when I hear the words, Ōrākau, Rangiaowhia, Rangiriri, Meremere; this tragic roll call of almost incomprehensible pain and loss. When I drive down Great South Road to the Waikato, I imagine the beat of horse’s hooves and the tramp of soldier’s boots and I feel a catch in my throat. Read More →
Recently, during a staff-room lunch break with colleagues in my Faculty, a debate sprang up about teaching about violent histories. They had been talking about the reluctance of the New Zealand Ministry of Education to position New Zealand’s colonial history as a central component of the school curriculum. It was one of those conversations that started casually enough but ended in fiery denunciations and a string of reply-to-all emails that lasted through the afternoon. Someone had brought in a basket of feijoas† from their garden and I tucked into them as the debate unfolded at the other end of the table (I’ve published on this debate so my views are already known to my colleagues).
BEGINNINGS
Academic careers have many beginnings. I did not start out with the intention of becoming a ‘Māori sociologist’ or a sociologist who writes about the social worlds of Māori. As an early career academic, my dream was to have a day job that took me to less familiar worlds. Read More →
BEGINNINGS
Young people tell each other stories about the world every day. We think we are listening but often we are not. We have plugs in our ears that drown out their words. Read More →
Fire. In a valley, near where I once lived in Wellington, there is a street lined with old houses that I used to pass on my way home from work. Read More →
It is arguably true that the past is a story about grandmothers. Part of my own past can be found in a spiral-bound 8B8 exercise book with a red cover that my mother keeps in a drawer by her bed. A couple of years before her death my grandmother bought the exercise book from the corner shop down the road and in her cramped, arthritic hand, she wrote the story of her life.Read More →
NANTOU COUNTY, TAIWAN
Place-based education — the idea that local communities provide the raw materials for learning — is having bit of a ‘moment’ in New Zealand right now. My own work in this field began in 2008 when I was invited to join a group of science educators in Taiwan. Read More →
A further strand of my work involves history, memory and nationhood. My research in the field of transitional justice highlights the contested nature of how we remember— and forget— in settler-colonial nations where past violence against indigenous populations remains unresolved. This page is under development. I will add to it soon. RELATED PUBLICATIONS Kidman, J. (Forthcoming). Remembering and forgetting the colonial past at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In C. Peck & T. Epstein, (Eds.). Research on teaching and learning difficult histories: Global concepts and contexts. Routledge. O’Malley, V. & Kidman, J. (2017). Settler colonial history, commemoration and white backlash: RememberingRead More →
Powerful economic forces were at work in the early years of the 21st century. The subprime mortgage market crashed in 2008 and the recession that followed echoed around the world. A host of other shocks were experienced in New Zealand— the Canterbury earthquake in 2011 and severe droughts in 2012 and 2013 amongst others.Read More →
I have always been fascinated by the academic profession. My first job at the university was in an academic development unit where I ran workshops and seminars for academic teaching staff.Read More →