Fulbright New Zealand is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2025 New Zealand Graduate and Scholar Awards.
The grantees in each category are as follows.
Fulbright NZ Scholar Awards
Fulbright Scholar Awards are for New Zealand academics, artists or professionals to lecture and/or conduct research at US institutions.
The following awards were granted this year.
- Michael Baker will research the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases at the Harvard University Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Jerome Ng from Tauranga will research how health systems achieve and deliver high quality healthcare and outcomes at Harvard Medical School.
- Albert Refiti (Sā Aiono i Fasito’outa, Aiga o Leali’ifano i Vaovai, Samoa) will research and write a book title Cosmogonic Artefacts: Spatial Exposition of Pacific Architecture, while being based at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City.
Fulbright Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award
This award is for a New Zealand academic, artist or professional to conduct research and/or lecture in the US for three to five months in the field of Indigenous Development. This award is sponsored by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, the Māori Centre of Research Excellence
One award was granted this year.
- Kelly Tikao (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) from Christchurch will research how native Hawaiian practitioners and traditional healers rejuvenate customary native Hawaiian maternity practices in the hospital and community environments.
Fulbright Science and Innovation Graduate Awards
These awards are for promising New Zealand graduate students to undertake postgraduate study or research at US institutions in fields targeted to support growth and innovation in New Zealand.
Five awards were granted this year. These awards are sponsored by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
- Sophie Couper from Tairāwhiti and Whanganui, will be completing a Master of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, New York.
- Katherine (Katie) Ellis from Christchurch will research the influence of the mechanical microenvironment on endometriosis behaviour at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Laura Gemmell-Sinnott (Kahungunu, Tūwharetoa, Waikato, Ngāruahine, Raukawa, Pahauwera) will research health policy design in sexual and reproductive health with a focus on Indigenous health equity at Columbia University, New York City, towards a PhD at the University of Otago.
- Eric Shen from Auckland will complete a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
- Cameron (Cam) Young from Hastings will research chronic disease progression, focusing on how diet during pregnancy causes epigenetic changes in offspring at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, University of Wisconsin–Madison in Wisconsin, and nutritional public health interventions at the Centre for Indigenous Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Arizona and New Mexico.
Fulbright New Zealand General Graduate Awards
These awards are for promising New Zealand graduate students to undertake postgraduate study or research at US institutions in any field.
Five awards were granted this year.
- Synteche Collins (Ngāti Pikiao, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whanaunga) from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa New Zealand, will research Indigenous and survivor-led approaches to combatting human trafficking at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
- Nathan Joe from Ōtautahi Christchurch will complete a Master of Fine Arts specialising in Playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.
- Phoebe Johnson rom Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington will be studying a Performer Composer Master of Fine Arts, at the New School in New York City, New York.
- Maria Rabino-Neira from Auckland will research how humanitarian exemptions have evolved under international sanctions regimes, especially in counter-terrorism frameworks, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Anna Rankin from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland will complete a Masters of Arts in Journalism with a Politics Concentration at Columbia University in New York City, New York.
- Leteisha Te Awhe-Downey (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngaa Rauru) from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington will be a Visiting Student Researcher looking at Indigenous experiences of diaspora at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and the University of California, Berkeley.
At the Fulbright New Zelaand Annual Awards Ceremony in Wellington on 25 June, the 2025 US grantees were also acknowledged and celebrated. Find out more about the 2025 US Scholars and Graduates here.
Fulbright New Zealand Executive Director Penelope Borland says the calibre of this year’s awardees is testament to the enduring value of the Fulbright Programme.
“At its heart, Fulbright represents a deeply held, shared commitment to bettering our world and our place within it. That is its great value, and that is what this group of New Zealand grantees exemplifies. We will feel that value now and, crucially, for the years and indeed decades ahead,” said Penelope Borland.
Established in the US in 1946, the Fulbright programme is one of the largest and most significant educational exchanges of scholars in the world. Fostering academic excellence and people to people connection, the Fulbright Programme seeks to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs.