title: Afterword—Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘Down Under’

authors: Longhurst, Robyn

abstract: The specialist sessions on ‘Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘‘Down Under’’’at the Australian Geographers’ conference in Melbourne in July 2007, and the subsequent publication of the essays presented here, is long overdue. The editors, in their introduction, explain that the aims of the sessions and this subsequent themed issue are (1) to showcase specifically Australasian-based research on spaces, places and scales of sexuality and gender; and (2) to offer Australasian perspectives on disciplinary debates about sexuality and gender. Undoubtedly these aims have been fulfilled. These essays have been written by scholars in a range of disciplines. Some are emerging scholars, others more senior. It is an eclectic collection containing essays on topics as diverse as young men who surf, and women who ‘come out’ as lesbian only to then ‘come out’ again as heterosexual, and yet key questions about identity, difference, gender, and sexuality underpin all the contributions, which give it a useful cohesion. When I first saw the call for papers for the specialist sessions at the Melbourne conference I was keen to take part. Over the past 15 years or so I have attended a number of New Zealand and Australian geography conference sessions on gender but I cannot recall attending sessions specifically on sexuality, or even on sexuality and gender. The conference in Melbourne, therefore, was a great opportunity but unfortunately it was one I missed (although I co-authored a paper with Lynda Johnston). The blow of this missing out, however, was lessened by an invitation to write the ‘Afterword’ for this collection. I really enjoyed reading the essays. They represent the burgeoning and exciting work on gay, lesbian, queer, feminist and gender geographies currently being carried out by scholars working in and on New Zealand and Australia. Undoubtedly they make a very significant empirical, theoretical and political contribution to the discipline. In the paragraphs that follow I address each of these contributions in turn.

text: Afterword—Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘Down Under’ The specialist sessions on ‘Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘‘Down Under’’’at the Australian Geographers’ conference in Melbourne in July 2007, and the subsequent publication of the essays presented here, is long overdue. The editors, in their introduction, explain that the aims of the sessions and this subsequent themed issue are (1) to showcase specifically Australasian-based research on spaces, places and scales of sexuality and gender; and (2) to offer Australasian perspectives on disciplinary debates about sexuality and gender. Undoubtedly these aims have been fulfilled. These essays have been written by scholars in a range of disciplines. Some are emerging scholars, others more senior. It is an eclectic collection containing essays on topics as diverse as young men who surf, and women who ‘come out’ as lesbian only to then ‘come out’ again as heterosexual, and yet key questions about identity, difference, gender, and sexuality underpin all the contributions, which give it a useful cohesion. When I first saw the call for papers for the specialist sessions at the Melbourne conference I was keen to take part. Over the past 15 years or so I have attended a number of New Zealand and Australian geography conference sessions on gender but I cannot recall attending sessions specifically on sexuality, or even on sexuality and gender. The conference in Melbourne, therefore, was a great opportunity but unfortunately it was one I missed (although I co-authored a paper with Lynda Johnston). The blow of this missing out, however, was lessened by an invitation to write the ‘Afterword’ for this collection. I really enjoyed reading the essays. They represent the burgeoning and exciting work on gay, lesbian, queer, feminist and gender geographies currently being carried out by scholars working in and on New Zealand and Australia. Undoubtedly they make a very significant empirical, theoretical and political contribution to the discipline. In the paragraphs that follow I address each of these contributions in turn.

year: 2008

title: And I still love them: On touching loss

authors: Snowdon, Jennifer Mary (Jenny)

abstract: In this article, the author performs a re-membering practice that incorporates a relational materialist theory. It traces the disturbances that follow in the wake of three deaths in her family. Written in an autoethnographic voice, the article is a polyphonic composition of the narrative therapy approach of re-membering entangled with the spacetimematter of silence, speaking, sitting, staying, presence, absence, loss of momentum, dreams, trees, books, cardiac pace-makers, writing, breath, ashes, murmuring, suffering. Thus, the dispersed agencies of bodies, human and non-human, reinvigorate a linguistic practice and the author's personal and professional life.

text: And I still love them: On touching loss In this article, the author performs a re-membering practice that incorporates a relational materialist theory. It traces the disturbances that follow in the wake of three deaths in her family. Written in an autoethnographic voice, the article is a polyphonic composition of the narrative therapy approach of re-membering entangled with the spacetimematter of silence, speaking, sitting, staying, presence, absence, loss of momentum, dreams, trees, books, cardiac pace-makers, writing, breath, ashes, murmuring, suffering. Thus, the dispersed agencies of bodies, human and non-human, reinvigorate a linguistic practice and the author's personal and professional life.

year: 2017

title: Working at the interface: Indigenous students’ experience of undertaking doctoral studies in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: McKinley, Elizabeth

subjects: Māori

abstract: Māori (indigenous)¹ doctoral students in Aotearoa New Zealand face challenges not usually experienced by other doctoral candidates. We draw on data from in-depth interviews with 38 Māori doctoral candidates and argue that because of the tensions between academic disciplinary knowledge frameworks and knowledge drawn from te ao Māori (the Māori world) indigenous students have additional cultural, academic, and personal demands placed on them while aiming to produce research theses that meet conventional standards of academic scholarship. Complex methodological and ethical issues also emerge in undertaking doctoral research projects situated at the interface of academy and indigenous communities. Moreover, Māori students experience various degrees of tension between their sometimes strong cultural identities and their emerging and, therefore, less certain identities as researchers and scholars.

text: Working at the interface: Indigenous students’ experience of undertaking doctoral studies in Aotearoa New Zealand Māori (indigenous)¹ doctoral students in Aotearoa New Zealand face challenges not usually experienced by other doctoral candidates. We draw on data from in-depth interviews with 38 Māori doctoral candidates and argue that because of the tensions between academic disciplinary knowledge frameworks and knowledge drawn from te ao Māori (the Māori world) indigenous students have additional cultural, academic, and personal demands placed on them while aiming to produce research theses that meet conventional standards of academic scholarship. Complex methodological and ethical issues also emerge in undertaking doctoral research projects situated at the interface of academy and indigenous communities. Moreover, Māori students experience various degrees of tension between their sometimes strong cultural identities and their emerging and, therefore, less certain identities as researchers and scholars.

year: 2011