Despite appearing in three Charles F. Goldie paintings, very little is known about Katerina Nikorima, Ngāti Pou. Drawing on various publicly accessible sources, this article explores Katerina, her life, and her ambiguous position in society to reconstruct her story in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth-century New Zealand. Born to Māori parents, Katerina was orphaned at a young age and informally adopted by Sir William and Lady Mary Ann Martin who arranged for her to receive a European education. After completing her education, Katerina used her training in language and singing to work with Māori, especially in the Hauraki and Auckland, to promote Māori needs. In later life, Katerina withdrew from the Pākehā society of her upbringing before she eventually disappeared from contemporary records.

John B. Turner (b. 1943) is one of New Zealand’s preeminent documentary and art photographers. This article explores a particular collection of images of the west Auckland suburb of Te Atatū Peninsula, which Turner took over a period of seven years (2005-2011), and which were published in the book Te Atatu Me: Photographs of an Urban New Zealand Village (2015). The focus here is on how such photography can contribute to the historical archive as visual evidence through the intersection that it is able to achieve between documenting scenes in the form of photographs, and using the aesthetic dimensions of the medium both to project forms of meaning onto those images and as a device of cultural preservation.

Over the last three decades, scholars have produced a large body of work showcasing how people have engaged with the environments of Aotearoa New Zealand culturally, politically, intellectually, and economically. This diversity in perspective is perhaps best exemplified by the 2002 anthology Environmental Histories of New Zealand edited by Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, and of which a new edition, Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, was published in 2013.[i] Nevertheless, there remain perspectives largely absent in New Zealand environmental historiography. Foremost among them are matters of toxins and toxicity. Indeed, while the Waitangi Tribunal has shed light on the impacts of toxins in some of its reports, for example how sewage discharge and industrial waste have polluted traditional fishing grounds, scholarship conducted outside the Waitangi Tribunal has been largely limited to expose the hypocrisy of marketing slogans like “100% Pure New Zealand” by showcasing how agricultural and industrial practices have polluted and continue to pollute lands, lakes and rivers.[ii] [i] Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds., Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002); Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds., Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013). See also Tom Brooking, Eric Pawson, et. al., Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand, new edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). [ii] See, for example: Jonathan West, “Mirrors on the Land: Histories of New Zealand Lakes,” Journal of New Zealand Studies NS30 (2020): 2-37; Catherine Knight, Beyond Manapouri: 50 Years of Environmental Politics in New Zealand (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2018); Catherine Knight, New Zealand’s rivers: An Environmental History (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press); Terry Hearn, “Mining the quarry,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 106-121; Tom Brooking and Vaughan Wood, “The grassland revolution reconsidered,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 193-208; Nicola Wheen, “An updated history of New Zealand environmental law,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 277-292; Michael J. Stevens, “Ngāi Tahu and the ‘nature’ of Māori modernity,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 293-309. For instances where the Waitangi Tribunal have studied the impact of toxins, see, for example Waitangi Tribunal, The Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Motunui-Waitara claim (Wai 6), second edition (Wellington: The Tribunal, 1989) and Waitangi Tribunal, Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Manukau claim (Wai 8), second edition, (Wellington: The Tribunal, 1989).

The historiography of state surveillance of citizens in New Zealand is meagre by comparison with that of Australia and Great Britain. This is partly a function of relative size but also a consequence of far greater restrictions on access to sources in New Zealand. The historiography of state surveillance in New Zealand before 1956 has been impoverished, until now. With the publication of Richard Hill and Steven Loveridge’s Secret History, that part of the equation has been rectified, despite the difficulties they encountered along the way. In the first of a projected two-volume study, they place New Zealand on the map of global state surveillance historiography.

At the celebrations of the Stout Centre’s 40th anniversary, held on Friday 15 August 2025, the present Director of the Centre, Brigitte Bӧnisch-Brednich, was in conversation with the Centre’s founding Director, Jock Phillips. We present a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Emma Meurant’s death in 1890 at the age of 16 put her briefly but sensationally in New Zealand’s national news spotlight. Her suicide was described across New Zealand daily newspapers as an agonising death caused by her taking the poison “Rough on Rats”. Later, Emma’s death was explained by a coroner as influenced by her reading with sensational literature, which, he and a jury determined, had put her in a state of temporary insanity. They arrived at this finding after hearing the testimony of community and family members two days after Emma’s death. Sensationalism therefore reigned not only in the report of her death, but also in how it was explained – and, one might read, how that conclusion was drawn. This article examines the context of Emma Meurant’s death and its historical setting, to develop understanding of how sensationalism was understood, explained and acted out in late nineteenth century New Zealand through the coroner’s inquest and newspapers. It explores the record of interactions amongst those who were involved in the event of this death, and how they appeared to fashion their own positions in relation to their social standing, their connection with Emma, and their own perspectives on sensationalism.

This article examines four memoirs that explore Pākehā identity: Peter Wells, Dear Oliver: Uncovering a Pākehā history (2018), Alison Jones, This Pākehā Life: An unsettled memoir (2020), Richard Shaw’s The Forgotten Coast (2021) and John Bluck’s Becoming Pākehā (2022). Each writer engages with history – and their predecessor Michael King – to contextualise their personal stories, work through their discomfort at being part of the dominant group, and participate in creating a more just national discourse. However, their centering of histories of individuals simultaneously engages with and disavows the racialised power structures rooted in the past that still shape the present.

We are pleased to be publish our second issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies for 2025. It is particularly noteworthy that this year the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies (to use the full name) celebrated its 40th birthday. We are very pleased to be able to include in this issue the transcript of a conversation between the Stout’s founding director, Jock Phillips, and the present director, Brigitte Bӧnisch-Brednich at the anniversary function

Brief bios of all contributors to this issue.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the government actively supports gambling through a preferential regulatory environment that facilitates ongoing, and increased, gambling operations. This article questions why preferential regulatory treatment exists for an activity that generates social harm. The article focuses on the Totalisator Agency Board New Zealand (TAB NZ) and the racing industry. TAB NZ has more regulatory concessions than the gambling sector in general, including through the tax system and self-regulation. There is an absence of transparency about both this support and the underlying assumption that increasing gambling to support the broader racing sector is desirable.