At the end of 2023, our Resilience Challenge Built and Coastal Programmes’ PhD student Akuhata Bailey-Winiata, from the University of Waikato, attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California. AGU brings geoscientists from around the globe for five days of interesting keynotes, talks and poster sessions where students, academics and researchers present their research, ranging from Indigenous knowledge to deep sea oceanography, to meteors and planetary expeditions, everything and anything geosciences is there.
Akuhata presented a poster about a chapter of his PhD research which looked to historical relocations of Māori communities to support future climate relocations of hapū / iwi at risk to sea level rise and climate change. A paper on this topic is currently in preparation.
A highlight of the conference for Akuhata was getting to meet some of his heroes in the Indigenous climate adaptation research space, such as Dr Dan Wildcat, Dr Julie Maldonado, and Dr Dominique David-Chavez. He also made connections with other Indigenous students and researchers from around the globe.
Credit: Dr David-Chavez.
Other highlights of the trip included all of the touristy things that come with an international conference, like seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and Alacatraz Island, as well as seeing all the architecture–interestingly made from native timber from Aotearoa New Zealand!