Summer Scholarships

4 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project have received funding for Summer 2017/18. The closing date for applications is 15 September 2017

We welcome applications from students who have completed at least two years of their undergraduate degree and are enrolling in 3rd year, the Honours programme, or the first year of a Masters degree in 2018. 

See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. http://www.soldiersofempire.nz/newsevents.html

Subaltern traces: mapping the brutal lives of 19th century redcoat soldiers (Project 303)
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From the moment a man ‘took the king’s shilling’ and was sworn to serve as a soldier in the 19th century British Army, many facts and figures about him were meticulously recorded by the army on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. The quarterly muster rolls (WO12) depict the 1860s wars in New Zealand in all their brutality and routine detail. Delve into these archives, discover the power of databases in historical explorations, and bring your analysis to an audience in a way you might not have done before.

Family fortunes and civic destinies: the fall and rise of Victorian Auckland ​(Project 328)

Explore the history of Auckland city and region from its life as a garrison town in the early 1860s, through years of sharp recession to its later emergence as a major colonial city by the late 19th Century. What family fortunes and city fates were won and lost in the unpredictable swirl of colonial New Zealand? How were women involved in this key transformation? The Scholarship provides an opportunity to work at the Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira library, a major national research institution with rich collections. It also enables the Scholar to work with an established research team through the ongoing Marsden-funded research project led by Charlotte Macdonald and Rebecca Lenihan (see www.soldiersofempire.nz).

Soldiers of the Queen: Exploring personal narratives in the New Zealand Wars (Project 329)
Taranaki Wars Research Opportunity

The researcher, supervised by Puke Ariki’s Curator Pictorial Collections, will be tasked with researching and cataloguing amateur photographer and collector William Francis Gordon’s photograph album “Some Soldiers of the Queen”, who served in the New Zealand Wars and other notable persons connected herewith. This remarkable album is a unique historical artefact. Dating from around 1900, the album contains over 450 photographs of soldiers, civilians and Māori involved with the New Zealand Wars. The album is an integral part of Puke Ariki’s collection of Taranaki Wars material, memorialising those who are depicted and bringing their faces/identities into striking contemporary view.  This research project would involve a student using a variety of research sources to develop biographical information for people and regiments depicted in the album, conduct some original cataloguing on the heritage database and make the results of their research available online via the Puke Ariki website. There will also be an opportunity for the student to showcase their research to a Puke Ariki staff seminar.

From colonial collecting to contemporary assemblage: joining the pieces of the New Zealand Wars together (Project 331)

Explore the rich and varied collections of Te Papa through a project to link photographs, archives, objects and other items relating to New Zealand’s nineteenth-century wars. What has the museum collected over the years and how might the varied items in the collection be brought together to tell a larger story of this important aspect of New Zealand’s history? You will be working with experienced curators and museum staff, and a research team at Victoria University. The goal is to build an assemblage from the collections, and to enhance means of public access to Te Papa’s collections.