Current teaching at Waikato
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Oceanic history
HISTY117 Global History - 2020, 2021
An introduction to the field of global history through the lens of the oceans. In this course, we aim to move beyond the nation-state as the standard unit of historical study, and examine the past from an oceanic perspective. We will look briefly at the history of different key oceans, including the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Oceans. We will then focus on different approaches to oceanic histories - including indigenous, environmental and legal histories of the ocean - with a particular focus on the largest geographical feature on earth, the Pacific Ocean.
> Hunt, Alice Suisana, 1925-2019. Oceanic Steamship Company :Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, Tahiti. [Brochure cover. ca 1900]. Ref: Eph-B-SHIP-1900-01-cover. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22764815
Pacific history
HISTY200 Pacific history - 2020, 2021
In this course, we will navigate the long and complex history of the Pacific region and its peoples together, with a particular focus on interactions between different groups across the ocean and islands. We will examine cross-cultural encounters and the development of the major imperial systems that were established in the region, with a focus on exploring the ways in which different Pacific communities responded to, and engaged with, both formal and informal agents of empire from the so-called age of exploration to World War II.
< Image: Captain Wallis and Queen Oberea at Tahiti (Il Capitano Wallis e la Regina Oberea a Tahiti), by Giovanni Sasso. Te Papa (1992-0035-2121)
Global food history
HISTY301 Sugar and Spice: Commodities in global history - 2020, 2021
We all eat, and we each love and loathe certain foods. Indeed, food is often part of our identity. But how have our diets changed over the world and across centuries? This course will look at the way that foods have been exchanged across the world, and the tensions between local and globalising forces in shaping the way we eat. Through the examination of important food staples, this course introduces students to commodity history as an approach to studying local, regional and global connections from the early modern period until the twentieth century. We will critically analyse this approach as a distinct, and often interdisciplinary, method for studying global history.
Supervision
I am available to supervise undergraduate and graduate research projects in the fields of Pacific history, colonial and imperial history, and environmental history.
Recent supervision includes:
Georgia Palmer - HISTY390 Undergraduate research project 2020
‘Harakeke, mātauranga Māori, and the history of conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand’
Hanneke Stegen - HISTY390 Undergraduate research project 2020
‘The usefulness of gardens as historical archives: Louis XIV and the gardens of Versailles’
Read more about her project on the Garden History Research Association blog
Xavier Worthington - HISTY390 Undergraduate research project 2020 - in progress
‘The development of Rugby League in New Zealand’