Rate My Professor Christiane Leurquin

Dr. Christiane Leurquin is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Otago, with a focus on Pacific Islands Anthropology within the Humanities Division. She earned her Doctorate in History from the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1992, specializing in the history of the Kanak population of New Caledonia. Joining the University of Otago in 2008 as a Teaching Fellow in the French Programme of Languages and Cultures, she has progressed to her current role and also serves as Senior Lecturer in Global Studies and Social Anthropology. Additionally, she holds positions as Pacific Support Officer, member of the Pacific Academic Staff Caucus, and Honorary French Consul for Otago and Southland. Her community service includes presidencies of the Alliance Française Dunedin (1998–2001) and the Fédération des Alliances Françaises de Nouvelle-Zélande (2000–2005).

Leurquin's research interests include discourses, practices, and theories of identity in the Pacific, Kanak women, family, and education; Pacific perspectives on wellbeing; orality and cultural studies in Oceania; and women's views on tradition in Kanaky/New Caledonia. Current projects feature analysis of Maurice Leenhardt’s early 20th-century Kanak tales focusing on women’s representations via oral traditions, and a €100,000 grant from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2022) for a documentary and educational materials preserving Kanak intergenerational traditions in local languages. She coordinates and teaches ANTH205 Anthropology and the Contemporary Pacific, ANTH312 Cultural Politics, ANTH490 Dissertation, and contributes to POPH192 Population Health. Key publications comprise the digital anthology Femmes Kanak (2024), Nights of Storytelling: a cultural history of Kanaky-New Caledonia (2013), reviews in Journal of the History of Childhood & Youth (2024) and Sites (2022), and papers such as De La Tradition orale à l'écrit en Nouvelle-Calédonie: L’Exemple du “petit coco vert” (2010), L’enfant kanak à travers la littérature (2012), and La popinée chez Baudoux et Mariotti (2012). Awards include the John Dunmore Medal (2021), the first to a Pacific recipient for contributions to French language and culture, and Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite (2017) for French community service.