Marsden Fund projects
Explore Waikato's contributions to research excellence. Learn about our Marsden Fund-supported projects pushing the boundaries of knowledge.
The Marsden Fund is the primary mechanism in New Zealand for funding pure research, undertaken solely to increase knowledge. The Fund is managed by Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand and supports research that is investigator-driven rather than funder- or industry-driven.
Current Marsden Fund projects
| Project | Duration | Principal Researcher(s) | Contract Value |
| Ngā Hanganga Mātua o te Whakaako Hitori: Critical Pedagogies for History Educators in Aotearoa New Zealand | 2022-2025 | Dr Nēpia Mahuika | $817,000 |
| Accurately dating the Māori past using marine shell | 2022-2025 | A/Prof Fiona Petchey | $839,000 |
| Beyond the cycle of shame and silence: A relational study of intersex experience | 2022-2025 | Prof Katrina Roen | $838,000 |
| Advancing understanding of atomic-scale interface formation and heat transfer in composite materials | 2022-2025 | A/Prof Fei Yang | $916,000 |
| Answering the Christchurch Call: Investigating New Zealand-based white supremacist discourse on social media | 2022-2025 | Dr Justin Phillips | $360,000 |
| Thermoelastic stress tomography: using heat to detect, map and quantifying the effect of hidden defects | 2022-2025 | Dr Rachael Tighe | $360,000 |
| Soil organics matter: exploring abiotic pathways to mitigation of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions | 2022-2025 | Dr Dorisel Torres-Rojas | $360,000 |
| Exploring the utility of stable state theory in real-world environmental problems | 2021-2024 | Dr Shari Gallop | $300,000 |
| Global productivity over the Holocene: Leaf hydraulic design to constrain the Dole effect | 2021-2024 | Prof Margaret Barbour | $960,000 |
| The development of the human visual system in utero: an experimental and computational modelling approach | 2021-2024 | Prof Vincent Reid | $819,000 |
| Modern Immunity: Modernism, Threat and Immune Poetics | 2021-2024 | Dr Maebh Long | $631,000 |
| Mycorrhizas, alternative stable states, and landscape partitioning in south-temperate forests | 2021-2024 | A/Prof Christopher Lusk | $960,000 |
| What is the alternative? Sulphur acquisition in the human pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae | 2021-2024 | Dr Joanna Hicks | $300,000 |
| Metal incorporation into honeybee brains and cells: at what cost to the hive? | 2021-2024 | Dr Megan Grainger | $300,000 |
| Thinking backwards and forwards: Characteristics and consequences of age-related memory decline | 2021-2024 | Dr Aleea Devitt | $300,000 |
| Global environmental monitors: do penguins concentrate and record diffuse contaminants from global-scale anthropogenic events in pristine Antarctic environments? | 2021-2024 | Dr Tanya O'Neill | $300,000 |
| Urban island: Histories of dispossession and belonging in Suva | 2021-2024 | Dr Kate Stevens | $300,000 |
| Exploring the limits of climate regulation: Could a decline in marine biological silica uptake exacerbate global climate change? | 2021-2024 | Dr Terry Isson | $300,000 |
| Macromolecular Rate Theory (MMRT) and the temperature-dependence of the terrestrial biosphere over time and space | 2020-2023 | Prof Vic Arcus | $3,000,000 |
| Languaculture within Te Ao Māori: Learning from infants, whānau and communities | 2020-2023 | Prof Mere Berryman | $841,000 |
| Earth-shaking insight from liquefied volcanic-ash layers in lakes: using geotechnical experiments, CT-scanned lake sediment cores, and tephrochronology to map and date prehistoric earthquakes | 2020-2023 | Prof David Lowe | $960,000 |
| Mis-counting China | 2020-2023 | Prof John Gibson | $858,000 |
| Te Kāpaukura a Kupe: The Ocean in the Sky – Māori Navigation Knowledge | 2019-2022 | Dr Haki Tuaupiki | $300,000 |
| Illuminating the dark side of restoration: Soil food web reassembly in regenerating forests | 2019-2022 | Dr Andrew Barnes | $300,000 |
| DNA repair systems of the Antarctic microbial metagenome | 2019-2022 | Dr Adele Williamson | $300,000 |
| In extremis: revealing novel metabolic pathways that support microbial populations in the deep subsurface biosphere of Mt Erebus, Antarctica | 2019-2022 | Prof Craig Cary | $935,000 |
| When and why did all the pā arrive? A multidisciplinary investigation into the spatial-temporal role of pā in the development of Māori culture | 2019-2022 | Prof Alan Hogg | $827,000 |
| The embrace of our ancestors: reimagining and recontextualising mātauranga Māori in psychology | 2019-2022 | Dr Waikaremoana Waitoki | $859,000 |
| Melanesia Burning: The Explosion of Pentecostalism in the Western Pacific | 2019-2022 | Dr Fraser Macdonald | $300,000 |
| Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900-1975 | 2018-2022 | A/Prof Alice Te Punga Somerville | $642,000 |
| Counting our Tūpuna: Colonisation and Indigenous Survivorship in Aotearoa NZ | 2017-2022 | Prof Tahu Kukutai | $735,000 |
| Total (excl. GST) | $21,716,000 |