UC Research Repository
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The UC Research Repository collects, stores and makes available original research from postgraduate students, researchers and academics based at the University of Canterbury.
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A Private Universe: What does spirituality mean and is appropriate support being provided for people in hospital?
(2024) Woodhouse, Colin
In New Zealand, The Ministry of Health has a contract with the Inter-church Council for Hospital Chaplaincy (ICHC) to provide religious, pastoral, and spiritual support in all of the public hospitals. The ICHC is a Christian only organisation managed by a panel of 9 churches. All of the salaried chaplains are practicing Christians, many of them ordained ministers. All of the trained volunteers helping the chaplains are practicing Christians too. This is in contrast with the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) NHS where each hospital trust has control over its own chaplaincy budget. This puts the trusts in a position to employ the chaplains they feel they need to in order to provide appropriate religious, pastoral, and spiritual support for the service users.
I knew that there was a consistently increasing proportion of non-religious people in Aotearoa/New Zealand but there had been no changes in the chaplaincy service since its inception. Spirituality is seen as a significant part of holistic health care both in the Māori health model Te Whāre Tapa Whā (Durie 1984 ) and by the World Health Organisation (Dhar 2014 ) . This importance of spiritual care made me wonder how can a hospital or the Ministry of Health claim to be providing holistic care without offering adequate and appropriate religious, pastoral, or spiritual support to the majority of the population?
Land use change in and around Aotearoa New Zealand’s braided rivers
(2024) Calkin, Aimee
This thesis examines the issue of land use change in and around Aotearoa New Zealand’s braided rivers between 1990 and 2020. It develops and tests a method to ask: whether and how land use changed in and around New Zealand’s braided rivers; and whether there are geographic patterns in the land use change?
The analysis of this research finds land use has changed across New Zealand’s braided rivers and has changed the most in Canterbury of the South Island and in rivers with more gravel area. Land use has changed the least across the North Island’s regions and Southland. The rivers in these latter areas have a reduced gravel content compared to Canterbury rivers.
This thesis concludes by looking into the future of legislative change to the definition of braided rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Women on the walls : representations of female saints and biblical figures in English wall paintings, 1100-1400.
(2020) Comeau, Jane
Paintings on the walls of English medieval churches were a vital aspect of conveying religious thought to a diverse and often uneducated audience. Representations of women within these paintings were carefully tailored to convey certain messages to their specific audiences and provide vital insight into medieval perceptions of women, both lay and saintly. This dissertation examines surviving paintings of St Margaret, St Katherine and Eve to explore how their images functioned in this uniquely public context. Wall paintings of the two female saints are compared to their depictions in the circulating hagiographical literature. Although they faithfully represent the narratives found there, violence and drama is overemphasised, in order to discourage laywomen from identifying too strongly with these figures of transgression. There are far fewer surviving paintings of Eve, and so this dissertation presents case studies of these scant remains, including a series of twelfth-century images found at St Botolph’s church in Hardham. Competing medieval ideas of Eve’s sinfulness are found to be reflected in these paintings. Additionally, their positioning within the various churches in which they appear offer important insights into how the image of Eve was employed to reinforce theological lessons, provide guidance and function as a symbol. This dissertation concludes that representations of women in wall paintings were complex and often contradictory, but that they were uniquely shaped by their role in the public sphere of medieval life. Women in wall paintings functioned not necessarily as moral figures presenting a cautionary tale or lessons on how to live, but as tools of the Church and the societal elite.
Ko wai mātou? : recording Ngāi Tahutanga in Mantell’s Census.
(2020) Gibbs, Eleni
Whakapapa is who Ngāi Tahu are. This dissertation problematic nature of recording of Ngāi Tahu identity and whakapapa through the first colonial attempt to do so Mantell’s census of 1848 and 1853. The nature of recording and the historical record has failed to adequately represent my ancestor, Mereana Teitei Haberfield and her whānau, in the way that they and their Ngāi Tahu community saw them at the time, to the extent that three of her children were erased from the record. The conflicting knowledge systems and understandings of what it means to be Ngāi Tahu at play within Mantell’s census went on to permeate throughout the processes that define Ngāi Tahu identity following the establishment of the Native Land Court as the authority for Ngāi Tahu whakapapa whilst working alongside the Ngaitahu Claims Committee in 1925. The tensions between the legal record and Ngāi Tahu lore that began with the recording of Mantell’s Census in the mid-nineteenth century continue on today as we consider Ngāi Tahutanga within the context of rangatiratanga in the post-settlement era.
A history of New Zealand’s Scandinavian and German migrants from the 1874 Gutenberg voyage.
(2020) Church, Joanna
Past literature has previously neglected to focus on and analyse New Zealand’s Scandinavian and German colonial migrants who settled in Canterbury and other regions of New Zealand outside Norsewood and 70 Mile Bush. This dissertation aims to fill this historiographical gap by examining the lives and cultural practices of the migrants who emigrated on the ship Gutenberg, which brought migrants to Lyttelton in 1874. The decision of the Central Government to bring non-British migrants to the colony and the push and pull factors which encouraged the passengers to migrate are explored, while the inclusion of migrant biographies illuminates the personal side to their stories. Secondary sources are used to show the wider context of late nineteenth century New Zealand. The selected primary sources, including newspapers and parliamentary debates, demonstrate the feelings of New Zealand society toward the presence of Danes, Swedes and Germans, and also provide valuable biographical information. The dissertation finds that the passengers often remained in Canterbury, working as farm labourers or completing projects under treasurer Julius Vogel’s Public Works Scheme. While this represented the majority, a select few, such as poet and librarian Johannes Andersen, managed to pursue more academic careers in cities. The migrants quickly adapted to speaking English, and some even went as far as anglicizing their names to fit into the dominant colonial society, but their religious practices, including Danish and German language church services, remained a strong part of their identity.