Sunday 30 June
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, New Zealand, offered the opening keynote. She was introduced by Debashish Munshi from the University of Waikato and a member of the IAMCR 2024 Local Organising Committee.
Smith is Distinguished Professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, an Indigenous institution of higher learning, and has been globally influential in forcing the recognition of indigenous philosophies and methods in scholarly practice in a wide range of areas, including communication studies. Awarding her the Rutherford Prize the Royal Society of New Zealand described her influence on education as creating “intellectual spaces for students and researchers to embrace their identities and transcend dominant narratives".
Well-known for her seminal book “Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples”, which critiques Western research methods as instruments of colonisation and shows ways of doing research based on Indigenous knowledge, Smith’s knowledge and experience make her particularly suited to address the conference theme, Communicative projects of decolonising, engaging, and listening.
