PhD journey sets graduate up for career success

Dr Laalaai-Tausa is currently the Research Manager at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, and was previously the Principal Policy Advisor (Pacific) at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

“Our biggest research project at the moment is the Pacific Ocean Climate Crisis Assessment (POCCA), which covers 16 countries in the Pacific. We are undertaking an assessment of the impacts of climate crisis in the region, privileging Pacific voices, experiences and narratives, led by Pacific people, for Pacific people.

“Certainly the discussions, the opportunities provided by Massey for dialogue, the sharing of knowledge, the opportunities to critique other people’s work and be critiqued have all shaped the way I approach the work that I do as well as how I engage with people at different levels. When I started my PhD journey, my supervisors promised that when my thesis was completed, it would open a lot of doors career-wise - they were not wrong!

“Ever since graduating, I have been proud to be a Massey graduate and hope that in the future there will be more and more Pacific people graduating with PhDs.”

Dr Laalaai-Tausa has been interested in politics since year nine at Samoa College.

“We had to debate issues around education, health and the cost of living and I realised that everything we do revolves around the government of the day, the political agenda and priorities of the politicians.

“Massey offered opportunities that were of interest to me, including support for postgraduate students, especially extramural, and initiatives like writing retreats and forums that helped me focus and kept me engaged and inspired. There were also opportunities to share my journey with other PhD students, particularly Pacific scholars. I had fantastic supervisors and the postgraduate office kept tabs on when my six-monthly reports and other work were due so it kept me accountable.

“I was able to dig deeply into political theory and democratisation for my PhD and I was both intrigued and motivated to write on the tension between Samoa’s traditional leadership/governance system of Faamatai and that of western democracy. There were numerous cases in Samoa where the village council decision came into conflict with a decision by the courts. My PhD explored why there was this tension and then looked at policy implications that could harmonise both the Faamatai traditional system and that of democracy.

“The support system at Massey was fantastic. My supervisors understood what I wanted to do and guided me through the process. They didn’t try to change what I had proposed or steer me towards something Eurocentric, they accepted what I wanted to delve into and provided the necessary support. There was a lot of email correspondence and check-ins that weren’t just to check up on the writing, but an actual genuine interest in the journey, which included my family, checking up on work (as I worked full-time and studied full-time) and on my wellbeing, so I found that invaluable."

Dr Laalaai-Tausa’s biggest challenge was being based in Christchurch while her supervisors and PhD colleagues were in Auckland.

“Frequent correspondence with supervisors helped. My primary supervisor would travel to Christchurch to meet me and go over some of the work I had sent and I was able to travel to Massey and take part in the writing retreats that the Pacific Office held for PhD students.

“Those sessions were invaluable as they brought all of us Pacific scholars together with a whole week of writing, guest speakers and presentations and so many opportunities to present and discuss our own work and be provided with constructive and meaningful feedback that would help us shape our work.”

Dr Laalaai-Tausa was born on the big island of Savai'i in the village of Neiafu and grew up in Samoa and went to school there until she left to pursue tertiary education at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji in 2002.

“In 2006, my husband and I, along with our one-year-old and four-week-old baby, left Samoa to come to Aotearoa New Zealand to explore further study and job opportunities. We came straight to Christchurch and have made it our home since then. Seventeen years later we are still here.

“When we arrived in Christchurch, we became immersed in the Samoan and Pacific community and have been involved in many initiatives including community development training, civic education and advocacy and migrant work to name a few. I am still a very active member of the community, particularly with education-related activities.

"This year I accompanied my daughter (the one-year-old we brought in 2006) to her first lecture at the University of Canterbury where she too is studying towards a law and political science degree.”