Keynote Speakers 

 

Guest of honor

Jennifer Evans, Director of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum

Ms Evans has been working at the Toitū Otago Settlers Museum since January 2010. She started as Visitor Experience Manager, but was seconded to Acting Director since October 2013. Prior to that, Ms Evans was Exhibitions and Building Services Manager at the Otago Museum. She has also held posts as Senior Officer Visitor Services in the Paisley Museum and Art Galleries in Scotland and Director of the Te Awamutu District Museum.

Ms Evans has successfully contributed to bring more innovation and participation to the Museum, ensuring at the same time the preservation and transmission of New Zealand cultural history to the community.

The Toitū Otago Settlers Museum first opened in 1908 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of Dunedin and took up a significant role in tracing the lives of New Zealand settlers – from indigenous Māori, Scottish settlers, early Chinese, to the more recent waves of migrants from Europe, Asia and the Pacific Islands – and their technological innovation, art, fashion, domestic life and transport. 

For more details on the Toitū Otago Settlers Museum: www.toituosm.com/

 
Professor Tony Ballantyne FRSNZ 

Professor Ballantyne is currently Head of the History and Art History Department at the University of Otago, Director of the University's Centre for Research on Colonial Culture and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 

His research interests focus on the cultural history of the British Empire during the 19th century and his extensive work has significantly contributed to a better understanding of the cultural dynamics that have shaped the empire. Of particular importance are his approaches and arguments on the history of the colonial Punjab and the Punjabi diaspora and the role of New Zealand within the British Empire. 

His current research focuses on the development of colonial knowledge, folk political economy and the connections between print capitalism and literary culture in southern New Zealand. 

Some of his most recent contributions have been anthologised in a collection of essays, Webs of Empire, published by Bridget Williams Books in 2012; he has also published Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori and the Question of the Body with Duke University Press in late 2014 and, in collaboration with Antoinette Burton from the University of Illinois, he authored Empires and The Reach of the Global, 1870-1945, published by Harvard University Press.

He also edits, with Barbara Brookes, the New Zealand Journal of History.

For more details on Pr. Tony Ballantyne please follow this link: www.otago.ac.nz/historyarthistory/staff/otago034785.html

 

 

Associate Professor Paola Voci

NZASIA (The New Zealand Asian Studies Society) President

Associate Professor Paola Voci completed a B.A. Honours in Chinese Language and Literature, Venice University 1991, a Diploma in Film Theory and Practice, Beijing Film Academy 1991, a M.A. in East Asian Studies, Indiana University 1997, and a PhD in Chinese, Indiana University 2002.

Her area of study combines East Asian Studies (in particular, Chinese language and culture), film and media studies, visual culture, and digital culture. Her recent research has focused on documentary, animation, and other hybrid digital video practices in contemporary China. She has published articles in Modern Chinese Literature and CultureScreening the PastSenses of Cinema, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, and Bianco e Nero. Her work also appears in several edited collections of essays, such as The New Chinese Documentary Movement and The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas.

Her most recent publications include her book China on video: Smaller-screen realities. Abingdon, UK: Routledge in 2010, her contribution Online small-screen cinema: The cinema of attractions and the emancipated spectator in C. Rojas (Ed.), Oxford handbook of Chinese cinemas. (pp. 377-397), Oxford University Press (2013) and her article The Light out of the tunnel: Re-thinking Chinese cinema’s war film RealismeParol,XXVII(25), 41-62 (2014).

For more details follow the link: www.otago.ac.nz/languagescultures/people/paolavoci.html