The latest Marsden Fund spending
The Taxpayers’ Union has highlighted some of the grants from the Royal Society’s Marsden Fund (funded by taxpayers) which is meant to be for the best science and humanities in NZ. They include:
- $360,000 to study Big Things such as the Ohakune Carrot, with a focus on “a critical gaze to the privileging of Pākehā-centred narratives in current research on roadside “Big Things” and “Weaving together feminist, participatory, and filmic geographies, this project seeks to re-centre alternative stories currently hidden in the Big Things’ shadows“
- $360,000 to collect disabled indigenous stories about climate change with “establishing how such stories resist ableist narratives and theorise and advance disability-centred ways of creating sustainable and just environmental futures.“
- $861,000 to explore dark nudges and sludge on social media in relation to advertising alcohol.
- $861,000 to help decolonise ocean worlds from imperial borders
- $861,000 to link celestial spheres to end-of-life experiences to “create opportunities to rekindle the ancient connection to the stars and re-imagine the meaning of death, while also advancing understandings about the practical application of Māori astronomy in contemporary times.“
Funnily enough I have just been looking at what sort of areas the Marsden Fund supported in 2008. They were:
| Can dietary lignans reduce abnormal cell growth? |
| Cloning mutant Mommes: a new strategy to understand and improve epigenetic reprogramming |
| Aposematic colouration in plants: ‘honest’ signals of chemical defences & influences on herbivore fitness |
| How do tectonic plates lock together? |
| New Zealand’s floral origins and the Oligocene land crisis |
| Was collapse inevitable on Easter Island (Rapa Nui): reconstructing a civilisation’s failure |
| What are the correct boundary conditions for fluid dynamics? |
| Are molecular metals like metals or molecules? A case study of superheated gallium clusters |
| New Zealand’s megaherbivores: resolving their ecological role and the impact of their extinction on the flora |
What would you rather have your taxpayer dollars spent on?