Te Pānui Taura
This issue: Why ‘Sixteen Candles’ is still lit at 40, ‘the career break paradox’ wins Otago’s 3MT®, the audaciously impactful graduate & more!!!!
This month:
‘The career break paradox’ wins Otago’s 3MT®
For some people, it may well have been the ‘worst year of their life’, but it seems they are still in favour of the concept of a career break.
The audaciously impactful graduate
Florals and weddings go hand in hand, but unbeknownst to many a happy couple, microplastics play a key role on their special day.
Flying start for MBA grad
While many of us were Googling ‘best hand sanitiser’ or ‘how to make sourdough’ during New Zealand’s lockdown in 2020, David (Tevita) Tohi was pressing his search engine into loftier service.
Plus
Why ‘Sixteen Candles’ is still lit at 40
Waste not - food research is a winner
Depths of tomboy trauma highlighted Kiwis’ MDMA use revealed
Waves of success
3MT People’s Choice: an extrovert in disguise
Rowing for good
Calendar
S-U-C-C-E-S-S for Dynasty cheer squad
Otago’s Dynasty cheerleaders deserve a cheer squad of their own after taking out gold at a recent Australasian Majors event.
The 16-member team pipped reigning champs UCheer from Canterbury to win the New Zealand Majors University 1-2 Division in Auckland this month.
Otago University Cheerleading Club President and Dynasty team member Rebecca Stewart – who is in her fourth year of a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce – says the competition was fierce.
“Although we aren’t up against many teams, it is a very, very competitive division and each University sends their best athletes.
“UCheer are very talented at what they do but their athletes are also very lovely off the competition floor. Many of us are friends and both teams even celebrated together after Majors.”
Dynasty is coached by Graham Versfeld and Mackenzie Fox through the Eclipse Cheerlead-
ing gym, the only cheer gym in Dunedin. Mackenzie, who is in her final year of nursing, also did the majority of the choreography for the winning performance.
“The team trained incredibly hard before the competition. They had their fair share of injuries and uni assessments leading up to comp – so I had to rearrange their routine a few times before they competed – but they were very resilient and willing to adapt,” Mackenzie says.
“The week of comp, they trained the hardest I’d seen them train. They gave their full outs [practice runs] their all, and really performed and bonded as a team.”
Mackenzie started coaching for the Otago University Cheerleading club this year but has been an athlete with Eclipse Cheerleading since 2019. She studies during the day and coaches in the evening, which makes for a busy, but rewarding, schedule, she says.
“This was my first time being the head coach of a team and the first time experiencing a win as a
coach. I was very emotional.
“I’m beyond proud of the team and I loved watching all their hard work pay off.”
Rebecca says the biggest positive of being in a cheer team is the community aspect and in cheerleading, more than any other sport, you really need to rely on your teammates.
“The nature of the sport means you need to work closely in sync with the other athletes to achieve what you need to do.
“It requires a lot of trust and is very much one for all and all for one. Without the contributions from each person on the team we wouldn’t be able to have such a strong team.”
At one stage it was uncertain whether Rebecca would be able to compete, after she broke her foot a couple of months ago at training.
Injuries are very common in cheerleading, she says.
See full story
Why ‘Sixteen Candles’
Footloose. Sixteen Candles. Gremlins. Ghostbusters. What do all of these movies have in common? They turn 40 this year.
Age aside though, there’s something else they all share – the ability to conjure nostalgia. And that’s a powerful thing, says Media, Film and Communications senior lecturer Dr Rosemary Overell.
The etymology of nostalgia is about longing for a place that has been lost, Rosemary says.
“We often attach that affect or feeling to cultural objects or experiences that are linked to our early life, like our original home, life when we were growing up with our family.”
Dr Overell is a Xennial, someone born between 1977 and 1984, preceded by Gen X and followed by Millennials, then Gen Z.
These movies – Footloose, Sixteen Candles, Gremlins and Ghostbusters - continue to be popular, rewatched and talked about because they make people nostalgic.
Xennials wouldn’t have been old enough to enjoy
these films at the cinema but would have likely rented the VHS version of it from their local video store and played it on the TV in their family lounge.
“In wanting to watch these films again it can make people long for their early life,” Rosemary says.
“We have that sense of wanting to go back to that experience, perhaps as we hit points within our lives which are marked out culturally and socially, and key points such as hitting middle age, as one is turning 40.”
Nostalgia can take many forms and be used to market items in a way so that they appeal to multiple generations at once.
Gen X, Xennials and Millennials are lucrative key markets that media producers and distributors target by putting films and cultural objects “back in our view”, she says. A recently released documentary, Brats, about the 1980s ‘Brat Pack’ has been getting a bit of hype.
“That [documentary] will also take us back to wanting to re-watch the films, too. So those films are going to get extra traction and rewatches, re-releases on streaming sites or even remakes.”
Candles’ is still lit at 40
Nostalgia can be generated for a generation who never experienced watching a VHS at home but targeted by the affect offered by the object, Rosemary says. Gen Z never sat through the “dreadful tracking” or tuning of a VHS but they can choose to experience this by applying a glitchy aesthetic or blurry VHS-like quality to images via apps on cellphones, she says.
“A popular film such as Sixteen Candles would have been rented many times and over time the images would distort as the tape wore out.”
The impact of these teen movies continues to be felt. Teen films existed during the 1950s but were primarily teen exploitation films, Rosemary says.
“The teen films of the ’80s shifted away from a cheesy tone to something a bit more serious.”
John Huges was big at the time, directing Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club.
“There’s a sort of knowingness, a kind of wink at the audience, which some would say was post-modern – where there’s this idea that the audience isn’t just passively consuming it but wants to be in on a more sophisticated media product.”
Nostalgia is present not just in films but in shows which are now streamed on the likes of Netflix, such as Stranger Things
“Stranger Things is kind of a horror supernatural show that also has ’80s elements,” Rosemary says.
Winona Ryder, known for starring in late ’80s and early ’90s films such as Heathers, Beetlejuice and Mer-
maids, plays mum to one of the characters of Stranger Things, making the show appeal to multiple markets and generations.
Characters in ’80s teen films were rebellious types, doing drugs and living fast, Rosemary says.
These traits were then mapped onto popular celebrities like those in the ‘Brat Pack’ starring in these films and who were themselves living fast lives during that period of decadence right before the AIDs epidemic hit and the 1988 recession.
In spite of these events, movies starring rebellious teens stuck around
“So that kind of set a tone that I would say bled into the 90s, and then is kind of again re-done with things like Scream and Final Destination.”
Those horror movies were very post-modern, she says.
“Scream is a horror movie about horror movies, and it’s winking at the audience saying we’re taking off the schlocky ’80s horror movie by putting all these tropes in and having, in fact, the villain be the one who is a huge horror movie fan.”
“It’s sort of exotic, it’s sort of throw-back stuff, it’s prior to social media, some world [Gen Z has] never experienced.
“But I suppose with nostalgia you’ve got to be careful that you don’t fall into the trap of going too romantic, because the ’80s was also a dreadful time.”
Both America and Aotearoa New Zealand had conservative governments, and both countries saw the rise of neoliberalism and lot of people out of work, she says.
“These films certainly repress and paper over this, they’re very middle class, and always with a happy ending.”
The nostalgia can be enjoyed but people aren’t completely seduced by it, she says.“It becomes something you dip in and out of.”
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‘The career break paradox’ wins Otago’s 3MT®
Otago’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Grand Final was held recently. Five doctoral candidates and three master’s candidates each had three minutes to communicate their research to a non-specialist audience, with the help of one static slide. Communications adviser Koren Allpress spoke with the doctoral winner Patrick Mazzocco about his research and presentation.
For some people, it may well have been the ‘worst year of their life’, but it seems they are still in favour of the concept of a career break.
Doctoral candidate Patrick Mazzocco won Otago’s 3MT® grand final competition recently with his speech ‘The Career Break Paradox’. Patrick, who is halfway through his PhD with the Higher Education Development Centre, says for many people the idea of taking a break from their careers is terrifying.
He interviewed 24 people from eight countries and received survey results from a further 214 people. Participants had varying levels of education – high school to tertiary postgraduate, and they worked in a
wide range of industries including sales, broadcasting, education, marketing, IT, medicine, social work and industrial design.
“Many of my participants described growing up never questioning their career trajectories. They were expected to go to a reputable university, get a degree, get a job, climb the ladder within that organisation, and then retire,” Patrick says.
“I had several participants describe being in their dream jobs, like the ones they wanted at 10 years old. They liked their co-workers, day-to-day tasks, and lifestyles those jobs provided. Who wouldn’t trade for that situation in a heartbeat?”
However, many felt discontent and anxious about their confined life paths and having to continue climbing the corporate ladder.
Patrick was surprised by people’s motives for pursuing a career break – while burnout, job insecurity and/or work-life imbalance were mentioned regularly as expected, he was shocked to hear every participant
Patrick got the idea for his his slide after listening to his interviewees describe how alone they felt during their career break. A fan of sci-fi, he thought it would be fitting to depict this feeling as an astronaut attached to a space craft with the words ‘career identity’ on it, and then the astronaut adrift with the words ‘career break’ written on them.
raise the concept of identity.
“I anticipated the concept of identity would come up during the interviews, but it was astonishing to hear these people from very different backgrounds, who pursued career breaks for very different reasons repeatedly say things like ‘I didn’t know who I was anymore without my career’, ’I felt like I no longer had a place in society’, and ‘all of my self-worth came from my job’.
“So, they took career breaks, and grappled with the question of ‘Who am I without my career?’ which, I think, many people are afraid to ask themselves because they might not like the answer.”
Patrick wants to make it clear that these breaks weren’t all “cinematic adventures”.
“In fact, some said it was the worst year of their life.”
Regardless of what they did during their break, Patrick says everyone used the same language to describe how the experience changed them and how they think about their careers. They came out the other side with a more secure sense of self that allows them to say ‘I could lose my job tomorrow, and that doesn’t scare me because I know I’ll be okay. I know who I am, and that’s enough’.
Patrick has taken a few career breaks of his own and says each one was “rewarding and challenging”.
“At the time I thought they would simply satiate my wanderlust cravings and allow me to settle into a move conventional life without regrets.”
Unfortunately, that contentment never came. It wasn’t until he “fell unexpectedly” into career
counselling that he realised the value of those career breaks.
The informal lessons and learning experiences he got from his career breaks allowed him to better understand, relate with and support others. When he was considering his thesis topic he wondered if identity development was as crucial for other career break pursuers.
Career breaks are becoming more commonly discussed and pursued. Simultaneously, the age of retirement is being extended globally.
“Generations Y and Z will have to work later into life than previous generations, and they’re also struggling to save for this period of reprieve that seems so far away.
“And yet, there’s not much research on the topic [of career breaks].”
Back row, from left, master’s finalist Tandia Gooch (psycholog), Best Master’s Presentation Briar Mills (human nutrition), Best Doctoral Presentation Patrick Mazzocco(HEDC), doctoral finalist Tawfique M Rahman(geography). Front row, from left, doctoral finalist Jai Yap (medicine), master’s finalist Charlotte Harrison (population health, Christchurch), Doctoral Runner-up Ben Topham (population health, Christchurch), People’s Choice Arung Gihna Mayapada ( accountancy and finance).
Patrick experienced “disbelief” upon hearing he had won the Otago 3MT® final.
“I simply wanted to represent myself, my supervisors, my department, and my participants well.”
His next step entails submitting a video recording of his presentation for international consideration in the Asia-Pacific 3MT® and Matariki 3MT® competitions.
There will be a public voting component at the next stage, so hopefully the campus community can carry this success a bit further, he says.
Patrick wants to thank the people who participated in his research.
“They were all incredibly candid, authentic, and thoughtful during our interviews I was very fortunate to have such a wonderful group of people share their stories
and deepest thoughts with me.”
A big fan of sci-fi, Patrick says his favourite show is The Expanse which is set well into the future in space.
“As I was listening to my participants describe how alone and scared they felt during their career breaks, I thought about how characters in that show feel the same way when they’re adrift in space, hoping for something to cling to.”
The spaceships provide the show’s characters security, sustenance, purpose and comradery, many of the things Patrick’s participants say they missed during their career breaks. “It’s the source of their career identities.”
Patrick wrote several paragraphs describing this metaphor and fed it into Dall-E 3. He spent some time refining his prompts until getting the image he was after,
which he then further tweaked in Canva.
“It’s been interesting, though, because it seems to generate very divisive responses. I’ve been told it’s a wonderful metaphor and beautiful image by some, and that it’s upsetting or confusing by others.”
Patrick says these responses align well with the entire concept of career break, which is confronting.
“I say as much in my 3MT® speech: Career breaks are adversarial to society’s standards of success.”
He believes some people will see his research and feel vindicated, while others will hopefully develop a better understanding and appreciation for those who took such a courageous risk in detaching from their career identities.
Waste not - food research is a winner
Sorting through food waste bins for about a month at Otago’s 14 colleges –wearing a protective hazmat suit – for nation-leading research has won Human Nutrition student Briar Mills the University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Master competition this year.
“It wasn’t as disgusting as you might initially think because I was doing it on the day the food waste was generated, which was a lot better than if it was a few days old and starting to get smelly,” she says.
“There were a few icky moments but it was pretty good. I’d put on a podcast or the radio and just sort away.”
Briar’s research is the first in Aotearoa New Zealand to examine college food waste in such depth, says her co-supervisor and Director of the Food Waste Innovation Research Theme, Professor Miranda Mirosa.
This makes Briar’s work “invaluable in helping us understand our country’s overall food waste profile and impact”, Miranda says.
Collecting detailed and accurate data on food waste is essential for creating effective plans to reduce waste and promote sustainable resource use.
Briar’s co-supervisor and Human Nutrition Professor Sheila Skeaff says Briar was “amazing”.
“She is a food waste champion in every way; she showed that collecting and sorting through food waste was fun science and helps the planet.”
Briar discovered that about 160 tonnes of food is wasted across the colleges in a year – an average of 170 grams per student per day – and half of it comes from students’ plates.
Her research created baseline measurements for how much food is wasted and what types, so Otago can introduce the best practice approach to reducing it - Target, Measure, Act.
Otago is driving down food waste as part of its goal to reduce the total waste produced, and to shift to 50 per cent of all waste being diverted from landfill, so needs a baseline measure of existing food waste.
Briar says “what gets measured, gets managed”.
She spent three days at each residential college, auditing waste from food preparation, the servery, and plates, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
She also held focus groups with staff and students at three colleges to discuss their thoughts about food waste. Their strong consensus is it should not go to landfill, but to compost or be fed to pigs.
“However, it’s better to produce less waste in the first place, than think of more sustainable ways to dispose of it,” Briar says.
The focus group’s other ideas ranged from posters to remind students not to take more than they can eat, to intercollege competitions tracking the waste. See full story
Depths of tomboy trauma highlighted
‘Tomboyism’ is often fondly celebrated by society as an accepted form of gender nonconformity but is not commonly associated with trauma.
However, that is the unexpected finding from a new University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka study published in the Journal of Gender Studies.
When Otago PhD graduate Cassandra Joseph set out to interview tomboys from a range of cultures about their experiences growing up, neither she nor the study participants anticipated the trauma and distress they had sometimes faced would feature strongly in their conversations.
“The media often paints tomboyism to be a carefree experience, with tomboys being heralded as ‘rebels’,” she says.
“Nobody associates tomboys with trauma.”
Dr Joseph interviewed 11 assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) tomboys aged between ages 24 – 42 of various ethnicities and a range of gender identities from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States.
As interviews progressed, it became clear that for study participants there was often a sense of unhealed trauma that came with discussing past or present tomboyism.
Some identified as tomboys as a form of self-preservation, while others were labelled with the term and
experienced bullying or ostracisation.
One participant from Singapore described how in secondary school, male students would pull her skirt and say she looked ‘like a boy’, and the bullying became so bad she took up taekwondo to feel safe.
Another participant spoke of adopting a tomboy persona because her religious upbringing had taught her that within the church, women were deemed sinful by being desirable to men.
When she was 10 years old, two men attempted to assault her. By appearing as a tomboy, she felt she would be less desirable to men and therefore safer.
A transgender study participant noted the male privilege and increased sense of personal safety he experienced when he became male-passing - a sense of ‘brute strength’ that other participants also identified helped them feel safe.
The study suggests that in such cases, tomboyism has been used as a kind of self-preservation from “the leering eyes of the patriarchy”.
“While this is not the case for all tomboys, it is rather telling that AFAB people have to navigate gender norms to embody gender traits that make them feel safe,” Dr Joseph says.
See full story
Kiwis’ MDMA use revealed
New research delves into New Zealanders’ use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in detail.
Led by the University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, the study explores people’s MDMA consumption, including motivation, relation to alcohol and other drug use, and perceptions of long-term benefits and harm.
Lead author Jai Whelan, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology, says the prevalence of MDMA use in New Zealand is relatively high, but has not previously been investigated in depth.
“Understanding consumption behaviours is important as it allows us to find out what is going on ‘out there’ and guide our decision-making regarding where we might make the greatest impact with targeted harm reduction efforts,” Mr Whelan says.
“Although other research has investigated MDMA, we believe this is the first to look at use in Aotearoa in this level of detail.”
Published in the journal Drug Science, Policy and Law, more than 1100 people completed, or partially completed, an online survey.
To participate they were required to have used MDMA in Aotearoa at least once and had all used it in the past five years.
Results show the median age of respondents when they first used MDMA is 19 years and the average dose per session was 151 to 200mg.
Most respondents (88.9 per cent) had used it in the past year –mostly commonly at house parties
– and 96.8 per cent in the past two years.
About 30 per cent of people use it every two to three months, 14.9 per cent once a year or less and 14.9 per cent fortnightly or more. Males are more likely to use it more often than females.
Most males administer MDMA orally (53.4 per cent) while females primarily reported nasal use (47.4 percent).
Mr Whelan says the findings show the majority of people have had positive experiences using MDMA.
“Most people don’t run into
problems because of their drug use, and in this case, it appears that many people think their use has positively impacted their lives,” he says.
“This indicates that many users report long-term positive impacts of their use, not just acute euphoric experiences. These results could be important for understanding potential therapeutic uses of MDMA.”
However, he was concerned about the amount of alcohol some people drank while using MDMA.
When using both drugs in the same session, the median number of standard drinks was seven to nine. About 44 per cent of people consumed six or less and 31.5 per cent 10 or more.
Mr Whelan says it is important to remind people who use MDMA that consuming large amounts of alcohol at the same time can reduce the positive effects for some people, while increasing the risk of harm.
“I would encourage people to be mindful about drinking large amounts of alcohol on top of MDMA and whether it is necessary for a good time.”
“Reducing drinking when taking MDMA is unlikely to make it less fun and is likely to reduce your risk of harm whilst you save money.”
The audaciously impactful graduate
Florals and weddings go hand in hand, but unbeknownst to many a happy couple, microplastics play a key role on their special day.
The culprit? The little blocks of non-biodegradable foam that florists use to support floral arrangements. But what if there is a better, more sustainable way?
For entrepreneurship graduate, sustainability advocate, and self-confessed wedding aficionado Fasya Amasani Setiawan, this provided the perfect challenge to take on for her Masters’ project.
“I come from Indonesia, which registered 1.5 million weddings last year,” Fasya says.
“Even if only 10 per cent of weddings used five kilograms of floral foam each, that’s 750 tonnes going to landfill. The truth is it’s probably a whole lot more.”
Fasya’s project looked at the sustainable alternatives to floral foam and the market desirability for adopting these alternatives.
“Affordability is important as sustainable options may require more capital and this makes a big difference for businesses.”
Entrepreneurship is not new for Fasya, who used her architecture background and passion for weddings to start a sustainable wedding decorations business with friends back home.
“A few years in I realised that I did not know enough to run a business.
“We were trying to have a positive impact on the environment, but it was hard to make it viable because of the cost.”
This spurred her to explore options to study business, she says.
“I was awarded the targeted entrepreneurship LPDP scholarship for postgraduate study by the Indonesian Government.
Her hard work paid off, and at the culmination of the programme Fasya was given the Audacious Impact Award at the 2023 Audacious Showcase.
“The award recognised the potential for my idea to have an eco-friendly impact on the floristry business in Indonesia and affirmed that I was on the right track.”
Exploring sustainable floristry was not the only thing keeping Fasya busy while at Otago.
She is also an international
“AskOtago has also been amazing. They are very approachable, and I really can ask them anything,” Fasya says.
“So far, the hardest thing I’ve had to navigate is Dunedin’s winter and even that was made easier by the local Indonesian community’s support.”
Graduation is a “double celebration” for Fasya, who crosses the stage today to receive her Masters in Entrepreneurship*.
“After a few years in I realised that I did not know enough to run a business”
“I chose the Otago Business School (OBS) to do my degree because they offered a paper in sustainable entrepreneurship, which aligned well with my goals.”
Another reason she chose OBS was the opportunities provided for interactions with the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, Fasya says.
“This is where I was introduced to Startup Dunedin and the Audacious programme.”
Audacious is a programme for students to build their entrepreneurial skills, run by Startup Dunedin, a not-for-profit trust that supports and facilitates the growth of the Dunedin startup ecosystem.
Over the course of a semester, Fasya attended several sessions designed to hone her entrepreneurial skills and met with mentors and entrepreneurs from Dunedin’s startup scene.
“Audacious was the test ground for my idea of sustainable floristry and it gave me a head start on my Masters’ project.
“I learned a lot through Audacious, especially how to pitch my business.”
student ambassador, working with the International Office to share her experience of studying at Otago.
“It started out with me collaborating with the International Office on a social post, which inspired me to apply for the student ambassador role.”
Since taking on the role, she’s shared her story with a number of interested students back in Indonesia, participated in O-week events, been a part of Unibuddy, and featured in several professional photoshoots for marketing material.
“The unexpected benefit of becoming a student ambassador was how much more confident it made me.
“Before this I would have described myself as shy and not someone comfortable in front of the camera.”
The envelop of support, both from Otago and the community around her definitely helped, she says.
“As someone who had never lived overseas or alone, the regular interaction with Otago’s International team was very reassuring.
“It is also Indonesia’s Independence Day today, which makes this graduation extra special.”
Associate Professor Conor O’Kane, Fasya’s project supervisor, says her deep commitment to learning and developing her entrepreneurial skills was evident across her time at Otago.
“Fasya took every opportunity to apply her learning to sustainable entrepreneurship, culminating in a high-quality research project that explored the creation of more sustainable products that challenged entrenched industry practices,” Conor says.
“Her work ethic, entrepreneurial mindset and passion for the environment mean she is very well positioned to create positive change within any venture she participates in.”
~ Kōrero by Sandra French, Adviser, Internal Communications.
*For anyone wishing to follow in Fasya’s footsteps, they will be able to take a Masters (MBus) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from 2025.
Don’t miss all your postgrad news online:
Waves of success
Graduating with a PhD in mathematics and statistics recently was the trifecta for Dr Ben Wilks; he was granted Exceptional Thesis status for his thesis on wave energy earlier in the year and then secured his dream job in Newcastle, Australia.
He was granted Exceptional Thesis status for his thesis Topics in resonant wave scattering: From rainbow reflection of water waves to time-domain scattering by acoustic resonators, which looked at wave energy conversion.
“In the ocean, there are waves and they carry energy. We want to be able to take this energy and somehow convert it to usable energy such as electricity.”
A big part of the thesis was designing structures that make use of the phenomenon of resonance, he says.
See full story
Flying start for MBA grad
While many of us were Googling ‘best hand sanitiser’ or ‘how to make sourdough’ during New Zealand’s lockdown in 2020, David (Tevita) Tohi was pressing his search engine into loftier service.
“I googled ‘best MBA courses in NZ’ and Otago came up. It had good reviews and international recognition, and it was an online course, so it was ideal.”
David wasn’t even supposed to be in New Zealand at the time – let alone enrolling for university courses. He’d been en route from Vanuatu to Tonga for work when our Prime Minister shut the border to thwart the spread of Covid-19.
With two kids at university in Christchurch, David made his way south to join their ‘bubble’. That’s when he signed himself up to the new educational universe of Zoom-powered learning.
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3MT® People’s Choice: an extrovert in disguise
Arung Mayapada is an extrovert by stealth.
She used this secret weapon to great effect while presenting her PhD research topic – ‘Do UK charities perform better with women trustees?’ – at Otago’s recent Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Grand Final. It won her the People’s Choice Award.
Dr Pallab Biswas (primary supervisor) and Associate Professor Helen Roberts (co-supervisor) from the Department of Accountancy and Finance, have clocked this covert Mayapada verve – they’ve seen how her hands and face dance when doing her mind’s impassioned bidding.
Rowing for good
While most of his Otago peers were doing nothing more challenging over winter than surviving on two-minute noodles, Jack Caldwell was suffering heatstroke, drinking water from a filth-rich African river, and playing dodgems with hippos and crocodiles.
Jack took time out from his Bachelor of Arts and Commerce studies in July to go on the adventure of a lifetime: rowing 900km down the jeopardy-laden waters of the Zambezi River and Lake Cahora Bassa to help raise money for clean water charities in Central Africa.
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