Ocean Mercier
Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington
Speaker
Ocean
Mercier is a lecturer and researcher based in Te
Kawa a Maui, the School of Maori Studies, at the Victoria University of
Wellington. Ocean Mercier’s PhD in Physics received in 2002 was the first ever
awarded to a Māori woman. The same year she was awarded the first Māori
Academic Achievement Award for Physics. Ocean Mercier’s thesis research used
infra-red spectroscopy to explore the magneto-electronic behaviour of a
recently discovered family of manganese oxides. She has worked on
characterising texture in superconducting tapes at Industrial Research Ltd, and
helped design and deploy a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance probe of the fluidic
behaviour of Antarctic sea ice, with the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced
Materials and Nanotechnology.
Ocean Mercier’s current teaching and
research explores interactions between Māori and indigenous knowledge and
science, with a particular interest in the intersections of ‘euro-science’ with
mātauranga Māori and Indigenous Knowledge. She has collaborated with Dr
Christine Asmar, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Susan Page from
Macquarie University, Australia, to document and contrast the comparative
experiences of Indigenous Australian and Maori academics. She is involved with
Te Whata Kura Ahupūngao, a multicultural and multidisciplinary team which has
produced of a number of physics films in the Māori knowledge, available online
at the Victoria
University Te Reo Māori Physics website.
Ocean Mercier is a member of Oxygen Group,
convened by New Zealand's Ministry for Research Science and Technology.
Presentation Summary
As the world marches forward at an
unrelenting pace, we need to examine the values and knowledges at our disposal
and how they contribute to solving our common issues of growth and
sustainability. The dominant mind space belongs to western science, with only
pockets allowed for the depth and breadth of the indigenous knowledges that
could potentially be made available.
The indigenous people of New Zealand are an
example of a society whose rituals and practices have expressed a wealth of
specialist knowledge over thousands of years, in areas including astronomy and
navigation, and intimate understandings of the physical environment.
When western knowledge and indigenous
knowledges and values come together there is a potential for innovative
thinking and new solutions as we work towards the common solutions to shared
issues.
