Isabel Castro

7.30 pm Tuesday, 15 April, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

Kiwi ancestors were the lucky ones to survive the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago, and today they remain the closest extant branch of the dinosaurs, or, if you wish, the lowest branch of birds. Their physiology, behaviour, and genetics continue to fascinate us. Isabel Castro and her team have been studying one of the kiwi species, the brown kiwi, for the last 21 years and in this talk, Isabel will present some of their extraordinary findings.

Originally from Colombia, South America, Isabel has lived in New Zealand for the last 35 years and during 21 of those has been researching kiwi biology. Isabel is a wildlife biologist with broad interests including animal behaviour, parasite-host interactions, anatomy, morphology, sensory biology, and conservation. Her research is on island species, particularly birds, but also introduced mammals and charismatic land snails. Isabel has a passion for solving conservation problems, making new biological findings, and working with technology.

Nick Smith

7.30 pm Tuesday, 18 March, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

Our ability to effectively nourish an increasing global population is one of the key challenges facing humanity. Likewise, feeding New Zealanders well while balancing the environmental and economic aspects of our own food system remains difficult. And as individuals, how should we think about our own diets to make sure we are meeting our own needs, within budget, while still being able to feel good about what’s on our plates?

Food system challenges are global, local, and individual, and there are a range of voices telling us what we should do. What evidence do we need in order to act to achieve sustainable food systems and diets? What needs to be considered part of sustainability when it comes to food? This talk will focus on several aspects of the work of the Riddet Institute and the Sustainable Nutrition Initiative® that aim to inform the future of food systems and nutrition. At the foundation of this work is the idea that nutrition is integral to a sustainable food system: if we fail to produce and provide the food and nutrients to enable people to survive and thrive, we have failed, regardless of what else we achieve.

The talk will cover the nutritional adequacy of the global food system now and in the future; NZ food and nutrient production, trade, and availability; and the trade-offs between the different aspects of sustainability within diets.

Dr Nick Smith is a Senior Research Officer at the Riddet Institute, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence hosted by Massey University, where he works as part of the Sustainable Nutrition Initiative®, a program providing evidence for the sustainable food system debate and ensuring that human nutrition is seen as a key aspect of sustainability. Nick holds degrees in mathematics from Swansea University (UK) and in nutritional science from Massey University (NZ). His expertise is in mathematical modelling of complex systems, with a particular focus on human nutrition. His former research interest was in predictive models for dynamics in the human intestinal microbiome, and the influence on host health and wellbeing. He now studies the dynamics of global and national food systems and their impact on the nutrition of the global population.

Regina Scheyvens

7.30 pm Tuesday, 18 February, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

This presentation will discuss a novel tourism initiative titled Native Nations – Tracing Indigenous Footsteps, which began in 2023 based around a culturally immersive overseas exchange programme for Indigenous youths. Drawing from scholarship on justice tourism, Indigenous tourism and regenerative tourism, the research extends the body of critical tourism scholarship by demonstrating how Indigenous-led justice tourism offers far more than commercial returns. While justice tourism is often built on an understanding that those visited are the ones seeking justice, in the case of Native Nations, the young Indigenous tourists are themselves the ones seeking justice. The research finds that Native Nations achieves wide-ranging benefits such as building solidarity, uplifting youths, reconnecting youths to sources of their strength and identity, and healing injustice. More broadly, this study is helping to reshape and enlarge understandings of ‘the tourist’, and of what tourism can, and should, contribute to development.

Regina is Professor of International Development at Massey University. Her research focuses on tourism as a tool for poverty alleviation, empowerment, sustainable development and emancipation, with fieldwork conducted across Oceania. Regina has been principal investigator on two Marsden-funded research projects, and for 2022-2023 was awarded a James Cook Fellowship by the Royal Society Te Apārangi.