The Dr Cyril Timo Schäfer Memorial Graduate Student Conference Presentation Awards take place at the Association's annual conference. The purpose of the awards is to recognise excellence in conference presentation skills by ASAA/NZ graduate student members.
A number of graduate students gave high quality presentations at the 2017 AAS/ASA/ASAANZ Shifting States conference held in Adelaide last month. ASAA/NZ is pleased to announce our 2017 student award recipients:
1st Prize: Janepicha Cheva-Isarakul (PhD Candidate, Victoria University of Wellington)
Looking Thai, acting Thai: embodiment of Thainess among stateless Shan youth in northern Thailand
Grounded in an 11-month ethnographic research on the lifeworlds of stateless Shan youth in urban Chiang Mai, this paper explores how Thainess are corporally and literally instructed and how these youth strategically use this embodiment to their advantage in the real world outside school.
2nd Prize: Jacinta Forde (PhD Candidate, University of Waikato)
Kaitiakitanga ki te Toheroa (Guardianship of Toheroa)
This paper describes ongoing tension between Māori and the State in relation to the understanding of traditional resource management, kaitiakitanga, specifically in regards to the management of the taonga (treasured) species, toheroa (paphies ventricosa).
3rd Prize: Hina Tabassum Cheema (PhD Candidate, Massey University)
Illusions and disillusions: dilemmas of anthropological fieldwork
This paper addresses the dilemmas of anthropological fieldwork as I draw on my experiences of research with Muslim immigrant women in Auckland with whom I shared an insider position. It discusses these moments of frustration and the strategies I devised to address these challenges.
