Knowledge Sharing

As a Centre of Research Excellence, we have a number of knowledge sharing activities enabling our researchers and the indigenous research discipline to meet international academic standards and criteria. To share knowledge we aim to:

• Maximise the accessibility of our research by our various target audiences – international indigenous, international and national academic and mainstream, and Māori themselves
• Continue to maintain and to exceed conventional academic criteria in the publication of research outputs
• Extend our ability to disseminate research outputs through non-traditional means such as the internet to make the information more accessible by and user-friendly to a wide range of potential users (who are not necessarily ‘academic’)

We focus on how outcomes of research can be translated into real-world positive change. We are vitally interested in the creative potential of Māori peoples to precipitate such change. Consequently much of our research emanates from within Māori communities, often as a direct response to a wide range of matters affecting such communities and/or wider society. By sharing knowledge we seek the following goals in terms of seeking and valuing the input from Māori communities:

• To understand and identify their research needs and opportunities
• To assist iwi and Māori communities to set research questions and directions
• To enable iwi and Māori communities to become meaningfully involved in research, and
• To assist iwi and Māori communities in their learning about research so that in time they might either conduct research themselves or be able to commission research from others.

Overall our knowledge sharing strategy ensures appropriate sharing takes place in both directions (researchers to community and vice versa) and that the value of research to create positive change is achieved. To achieve this it is imperative that we retain flexibility in our approach in seeking research excellence.