Melissa Matutina Williams is a historian, author and academic in the field of indigenous studies. She has contributed research about the urbanisation of

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

in New Zealand that started in the 1960s.

Early life and education

Williams was born in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, and affiliates to the Māori nations of Te Rarawa and Ngāti Maru. When she was 13 years old, she went to

Panguru Panguru is a community in the northern Hokianga harbour, in Northland, New Zealand. The Whakarapa Stream flows from the Panguru Range in the Warawara Forest to the west, through Panguru and into the Hokianga. Demographics The SA1 statistical a ...

, a settlement in the northern Hokianga in Northland, where she lived with her grandmother. Williams has qualifications from the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

. She completed

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degrees in sociology and history, the latter with first-class honours. She went on to earn a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree with first-class honours in history, and a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in history. Her doctoral thesis was titled ''Back-home and home in the city: Māori migrations from Panguru to Auckland, 1930–1970''.

Career

Since 2013, Williams has held a lecturer position at the University of Auckland. Her published book ''Panguru and the City: Kāinga Tahi, Kāinga Rua: An Urban Migration History'' (2015) highlights stories of Māori urbanisation the mostly unknown about 'dynamic Māori community sites' that were built from people who migrated from their home areas to the cities from the 1960s. Reviewer Coll Thrush praises the book saying, "the fertile intersections between past and present and between the urban and the Indigenous shape this important work, which should take its place among the best scholarship on urban Indigeneities." Williams and Aloha Harris collaborated on the book ''Te ao hurihuri : the changing world, 1920-2014'' (2018)''.'' Williams and Harris received a Marsden grant about how Māori held onto their aspirations for a healthy family while encountering state welfare policies.

Selected publications

* * *

Awards

* Post-Doctoral Research Award - Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust / Dame Joan Metge * Copyright Licensing New Zealand Writers’ Award * E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award,

Ockham New Zealand Book Awards The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder W ...

(2016) for ''Panguru and the City: Kāinga Tahi, Kāinga Rua: An Urban Migration History'' * Bert Roth Award (2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Melissa New Zealand academics New Zealand women academics New Zealand historians New Zealand women historians Year of birth missing (living people) Living people