He Pito Mata Meeting with the Royal Society Te Apārangi

He Pito Mata brings together early-career Māori and Pacific researchers with fellows of the Royal Society Te Apārangi for two days of shared work. The meeting is built around a simple premise: the people shaping the next generation of Pacific research should be in the same room as the people who can open doors for them, and there should be enough time for those conversations to go somewhere.

Mornings are given to plenary sessions where senior researchers set out how funding, publication and institutional pathways actually work in Aotearoa and across the region. Afternoons move into small groups, where participants workshop their own projects with a mentor and a handful of peers working on adjacent questions.

The meeting closes with a session on what participants need from the Academy over the coming year. What is said there feeds directly into our mentoring programme and our submissions to research funders, so the room shapes the work that follows it.

There is no cost to attend. Travel support is available for participants coming from outside Wellington, and we ask that you indicate this when registering so we can plan accordingly.