Rate My Professor Jacinta Beckwith

Jacinta Beckwith (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) is Head Curator Māori at the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Library in Dunedin, New Zealand. As Kaitiaki Mātauranga Māori, she oversees the care, access, and promotion of Māori knowledge and collections within this renowned special collections library. Beckwith earned her Master of Arts from the University of Otago in 2002, with a thesis entitled "Pre-Angkor Cambodia: the transition from prehistory to history," reflecting her foundational interest in archaeological studies. She is currently a PhD candidate affiliated with the Centre for Indigenous Science and Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Otago. Her doctoral research investigates Tikapa as an archaeological and ancestral landscape in the Waiapu River Valley, employing site surveys of pā sites, pits, terraces, and agricultural features alongside Māori oral histories and traditions to bolster tribal identity and wellbeing for Ngāti Porou. This work is supported by a Coastal People: Southern Skies PhD scholarship.

In 2021, Beckwith served as a Research Fellow on the Te Takarangi Project with Professor Jacinta Ruru in the Faculty of Law, taking a year's leave from her Hocken role. Her scholarly contributions include co-authorship on papers advancing Māori Indigenous knowledge in Antarctic contexts. Key publications are "Transforming Antarctic management and policy with an Indigenous Māori lens" (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021) and "A short scan of Māori journeys to Antarctica" (Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2022), which document historical Māori voyages and urge integration of mātauranga Māori into policy. In 2024, she was awarded the Skinner Fund by Royal Society Te Apārangi to examine Kaupapa Māori archaeology's contributions to the health and wellbeing of Māori coastal communities. Beckwith contributes to public scholarship through the Hocken Blog, authoring posts on early Māori printed materials like the Williams Collection and cultural topics such as Matariki and Puaka, and delivers guest talks, including at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.