Rate My Professor Erica Newman

Dr Erica Newman is a Senior Lecturer in Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago, where she also serves as Programme Coordinator for the Master of Indigenous Studies (MIndS). A Ngāti Hine and Ngāpuhi affiliate, she earned her BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from the University of Otago. Her PhD thesis examined colonial interventions on guardianship and 'adoption' practices in Fiji from 1874 to 1970. Newman's research specializations encompass indigenous kinship structures, child circulation practices, whāngai, transracial adoption, and identity formation among Māori adoptees and their descendants. She received a Marsden Fast-Start Grant in 2020 for her project exploring the intergenerational impacts of the 1955 New Zealand Adoption Act on descendants seeking their tūrangawaewae. Additionally, she contributes to the Marsden-funded project Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori home front during the Second World War, led by Professors Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson.

Newman's academic career at the University of Otago includes roles as Lecturer from 2020, Fellow from 2015 to 2020, and Research Assistant from 2013 to 2014. She has been recognized with the inaugural Māori Early Career Award for Distinction in Research in 2023, the Skinner Fund in 2014, a University of Otago PhD Scholarship in 2012, and Te Tumu Kawakawa Prize in 2006 and Tōtōweka Prize in 2005. Her key publications include co-authorship of the book Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori home front during the Second World War (Auckland University Press, 2024); chapters such as 'Apirana Ngata, John Pascoe and The Ngarimu Hui' in Picturing Citizenship (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) and 'Heritage children' in Te Hau Kāinga (2024); and peer-reviewed articles like 'Whakapaparanga: Social structure, leadership and whāngai' in Te Kōparapara (2018, cited 25 times), 'History of transracial adoption: a New Zealand perspective' in American Indian Quarterly (2013, cited 21 times), 'Challenges of identity for Māori adoptees' in Australian Journal of Adoption (2011), and 'The effect of the colonialist terms “orphan” and “adoption” on the citizenship status of indigenous Fijian adoptees' in AlterNative (2018). With over 100 citations on Google Scholar, her scholarship illuminates colonial legacies on indigenous families in Aotearoa and the Pacific.