Arama Tairea is the inaugural winner of the Sir Lloyd Geering Scholarship in Religion
Congratulations to Arama on being the first recipient of the $10,000 annual scholarship which will support his Masters research examining contemporary understandings of religion among Cook Island people in New Zealand.
Sir Lloyd was the founding Professor of Religious Studies at the University in 1971. He contributed greatly to the study of religion in New Zealand and to thinking about transformations of religion in modernity. As a public intellectual, commentator and activist, his broad-ranging contributions to public life were also influential. In 2007, Geering was appointed a Member of the Order of New Zealand—the nation’s highest civilian honour.
The postgraduate scholarship established in his name supports postgraduate studies in Religious Studies and helps a new generation of students learn to tackle the compelling issues of their times with the fresh thinking and expansive imagination that Sir Lloyd exemplified.
Arama says, “I am very humbled and honoured to be given the chance to continue Sir Lloyd Geering’s legacy as the inaugural recipient of the Sir Lloyd Geering Scholarship in Religion. Like Geering, I am fascinated by contemporary religious change. I am a child of the Pacific (Cook Islands Māori), and this scholarship gives me the opportunity to hopefully provide a detailed contemporary understanding of religion and religiosity on Cook Islands Māori in New Zealand, a people who have experienced much religious change since they first started arriving in the early 20th century.”
Programme Director, Associate Professor Geoff Troughton comments that “Religious Studies is grateful to the numerous supporters who enabled this new scholarship. We are especially delighted with Arama’s success. He is a more than worthy winner, and his important and exciting project is wonderfully aligned with the spirit and intent of the scholarship.”
The religiosity and religious experiences of Cook Islanders in New Zealand are largely unexplored and analysis of Pacific peoples’ experiences of nonreligion is virtually absent. Arama’s research will begin to address some of these gaps, building up foundational knowledge about Cook Island religion in New Zealand, helping to clarify Cook Island peoples’ experiences of cultural identity and its relationship with religion, and locating this within the broader Pacific diaspora in New Zealand.
The Religious Studies Programme is continuing to seek support for the scholarship, in order to secure its long-term future, recognising the challenges of rising costs and the substantial financial burden of study.