India research projects win Asia NZ Foundation funding

India research projects win Asia New Zealand Foundation funding

17 December 2014

Two New Zealand academics will undertake fieldwork in India next year after being awarded funding by the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

The Foundation’s Early Career Researcher Awards are aimed at building capability and encouraging professional development of New Zealand researchers in Asian studies and New Zealand-Asia relations. The 2015 awards are focused on South Asia.

Associate Professor Adrian Athique, Chair of Arts at the University of Waikato, has won funding for his project “Projecting Soft Power in Southeast Asia: A reception study of Indian media exports”. Dr Athique will use his $20,000 scholarship to travel to New Delhi, India and to the Philippines, Myanmar and Malaysia – countries that are markets for India’s media exports, such as film and television.

Dr Athique says the Indian government is revitalising its “Look East” policy created in 1993, and cultural exports such as film and television are signs of the country’s desire to increase its presence in Southeast Asia. He plans to interview media industry representatives and members of the public to find out how well media exchanges contribute to a “new impression of a ‘rising’ India as a commercial partner, technology hub and cultural powerhouse in the region”.

The project will deepen understanding of inter-Asian relations in a region that is strategically vital to New Zealand, he says.

Meanwhile, Massey University’s Dr Robyn Andrews, senior lecturer in social anthropology, will use her $20,000 funding to research “The invisible Indian: The Anglo-Indian diaspora in New Zealand”.

“Anglo-Indians, an Indian minority community, have been migrating to New Zealand since at least the early 20th century, yet they continue to be almost entirely overlooked in accounts of ‘Indians’ in New Zealand,” she says.

She plans to locate as many Anglo-Indians in New Zealand as possible – using archival material and other data – and will conduct interviews to build up a picture of this Indian minority within New Zealand. She will also travel to India to interview Anglo-Indians aspiring to migrate to New Zealand, and attend a world reunion of Anglo-Indians in early 2016.

Asia New Zealand Foundation director of research Dr Andrew Butcher says the two projects were chosen by senior New Zealand academics and Asia New Zealand Foundation after a competitive application process.

“India is an important country for New Zealand in all sorts of ways. Dr Athique and Dr Andrews, in looking at India in the region and at Indians in New Zealand, will add to our increasing store of knowledge about India as well as build New Zealanders’ knowledge about this important Asian country.”

The Asia New Zealand Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organisation dedicated to building New Zealand’s links with Asia through a range of programmes, including business, culture, education, media, research and a Leadership Network. The Foundation is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year.

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