Maria Bargh (Te Arawa, Ngāti Awa) has a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the Australian National University. She is a Senior Lecturer in Māori Studies at Victoria University and editor of Māori and Parliament (Huia Publishers, 2010) and Resistance: an Indigenous Response to Neoliberalism(Huia Publishers, 2007).

Dr Pauline Harris is the Chairperson of the SMART board and a postdoctoral researcher at Victoria University. Her research involves searching for extra-solar planets.

Joanna is a sociologist with affiliations to Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa. Her work spans indigenous sociology, Māori youth, higher education, decolonization studies and comparative education. She is especially interested in the interplay of power relations between different groups of people.

Joanna is working on two Marsden projects: He Taonga te Wareware: Remembering and Forgetting New Zealand’s Colonial Past investigates how New Zealanders selectively remember and forget difficult and violent events from our colonial past; and

Professor Rawinia Higgins was appointed Te Tumu Ahurei (Māori) / Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Māori) of Victoria University of Wellington in 2016.  She was previously Victoria’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor Māori Research and Head of School for Te Kawa a Māui / School of Māori Studies and went to Victoria as a senior lecturer in 2009 after holding academic positions at the University of Otago for 12 years. Her research expertise is Māori language revitalisation and, more specifically, language planning and policy.

Cindy Kiro is the Director of The Starpath Project, at the University of Auckland and was previously Head of School Te Kura Māori at Victoria University and Children’s Commissioner. Her areas of research expertise are Public Health, Māori Health, Children and Young People Policy, and Māori Development. She is a lead author on “Trends in Wellbeing for Māori households/families, 1981–2006".