School of Languages, Social and Political Sciences

Sebastiaan is a lecturer in the Political Science and International Relations department at UC. He teaches POLS206 (Introduction to Public Policy and Policy Analysis) and POLS301 (Contemporary Political Theory).

His research and teaching interests are in democratic theory, utopianism, populism, cities and the built environment, and conspiracy theories. He completed his PhD in political theory at the University of Galway—his thesis explored the parallels between populism and early twentieth-century utopianism, with a specific focus on urban spaces and ideology.

Anne Blumenthal is the German Studies Programme Coordinator at the University of Canterbury as well as the South Island DAAD Representative in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Anne completed her Master's Degree in German as a Foreign Language Teaching and Cultural Studies in 2017 before she joined a private language institute in Berlin where she was responsible for language teaching and university placement of international students. Anne then came to Aotearoa New Zealand as a DAAD teaching assistant at the University of Auckland for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was involved in implementing emergency teaching methods as well as developing blended learning material. 

She is interested in digital teaching and blended learning formats, including authentic learning material, as well as creating opportunities for engagement outside of the classroom.

Besides teaching in the German Studies Programme, as one of the DAAD representatives (German Academic Exchange Service) to NZ, Anne informs about studying and conducting research in Germany, about scholarship options, and she is actively involved in the German network of institutions, teachers, and other relevant contacts all over New Zealand.

Professor Anne-Marie Brady FRSNZ is a specialist on the Chinese Communist Party (domestic politics and foreign policy), polar politics, Pacific politics, and New Zealand foreign policy. She is a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker. She is founding and executive editor of The Polar Journal (Taylor and Francis Publishers). She has published ten books and over fifty sole-authored scholarly papers. She has written more than 60 opeds on her research for newspapers such as the New York Times, The Guardian, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Financial Times, The Diplomat. In addition to her duties at the University of Canterbury, Professor Brady holds a number of honorary roles. She was a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC from 2014 to 2025. In 2014 she was appointed to a two-year term on the World Economic Forum's Global Action Council on the Arctic. She is an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). 

Professor Brady's books include Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), Looking North, Looking South: China, Taiwan and the South Pacific (World Scientific, 2010); China's Thought Management (Routledge, 2012), The Emerging Politics of Antarctica (Routledge, 2013), China as a Polar Great Power (Cambridge University Press and Wilson Press, 2017), and Small States and the Changing Global Order: New Zealand Faces the Future (Springer, 2019). Her 2017 conference paper 'Magic Weapons: China's foreign influence activities under Xi Jinping' helped to spark a global conversation on China's foreign interference and espionage activities, as well as legislative change. Professor Brady's groundbreaking, policy-relevant, research demonstrates the important role of the academic as "critic and conscience" in a modern democracy. 

Professor Natalia Chaban focuses her interdisciplinary research on cognitive and semiotic aspects of political and media discourses, image and perceptions studies within the EU and IR contexts, and public diplomacy and political communication. Her international recognition is demonstrated by consistent leadership of large multicultural, multinational research teams with direct engagement and outcomes for policymakers. A leader of a number of transnational research projects supported by the European Commission, EU member states, and NATO, Natalia widely publishes including articles in high impact journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, Journal of European Integration, Foreign Policy Analysis, Mobilities, Comparative European Politics. Having researched Ukraine since independence, she focuses her research on how the current war has impacted communication, expectations, and attitudes internationally, specializing in crisis, youth, cultural, and heritage aspects in EU-Ukraine public diplomacy. Natalia's new research interests include science diplomacy, TechPlomacy, and digital diplomacy in the contexts of increasingly geopolitical world and its securitisation, as well as the role of emotions in shaping international perceptions and expectations.

Her 2024 award of the Royal Society of New Zealand Mason Durie Medal recognises Professor Chaban as the nation’s pre-eminent social scientist with outstanding contribution which has originated in a New Zealand environment and had an international impact.  In 2025, the UC Council awarded Professor Chaban UC Research Medal in recognition of her sustained excellence in research, teaching, and innovation. In 2024, she was awarded the UC Faculty of Arts Research Award in Humanities, Social Sciences or Creative Arts. Professor Chaban is a twice awarded Jean Monnet Chair (in 2011 and 2018), a highly competitive, prestigious title awarded by the European Union to selected leading researchers in recognition of research and teaching contribution to the field of EU integration studies in the world.

Professor Chaban is a director of UC research centre Public Diplomacy and Political Communication Forum.  She is the President, Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand; fouding co-editor, peer-reviewed Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies (now with Scopus, Q2), and a member of editorial boards of Journal of European Integration, European Security, European Foreign Affairs Review, Media, War and Conflict, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and Cognition, Communication, Discourse.

Visiting Professor, Vienna Diplomatic Academy, Austria (2025-present)

Visiting Professor, College of Europe at Natolin, Warsaw, Poland (2023-present)

Visiting Professor, Sciences Po Grenoble, France (2024)

Visiting Professor, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania (2019-2022)

Adjunct Professor, Cherkasy National University, Ukraine (2014-present)

In 2023-2026, Professor Chaban leads Work Package 5 "Strategic Communication" (30 researchers) within Jean Monnet Policy Network “Challenges and Opportunities for EU Heritage Diplomacy in Ukraine” (HER-UKR).  The Network, supported by the European Commission, includes 15 partners from around the world.  In 2024-2028, she is an invited Associate Partner within Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network Contested EU Foreign Policy in an Era of Geopolitics (EU-FOG).  The Network includes 17 partners from around the world. In 2025-2030, Professor Chaban is an invited Associate Partner in the “Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree European Politics and Society: Vaclav Havel".

Dr Lynn Clark is an Associate Professor in Linguistics at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury and a leading researcher in sociophonetics, language variation and language change. Her research explores how speech varies across individuals, communities and regions, and how languages evolve over time through the interaction of social, cognitive and linguistic factors. 

Lynn's work combines theoretical and empirical approaches to understand how accents develop, change and are maintained. She investigates the ways that factors such as age, gender, community identity, and geography influence speech patterns, with a particular focus on New Zealand English and regional accents. Her research has contributed significantly to understanding how sound changes emerge and spread through populations and across generations. 

A key theme of Lynn's research is the relationship between language variation and linguistic theory. Through large-scale analyses of spoken language, she examines how phonetic features interact within dynamic speech systems and how social meaning is encoded in accent variation. Her work spans speech production, speech perception, and lifespan changes in speech, from childhood through to older adulthood. 

I am an interdisciplinary scholar who works across a number of related areas, primarily sociology and history but also politics and wider culture. My research interests arise from a critical engagement with the intersection of religious and cultural theory as applied to both New Zealand and a global context. In this I often make use of Continental thought and theory, and in particular the 'weak thought' arising from the work of Gianni Vattimo. 

I have an ongoing research interest in NZ religious and intellectual history and the way it has shaped and been shaped by both NZ and wider global society. This has in turn resulted in work for over 20 years on the life and theological thought of the NZ logician Arthur Prior; just as I have undertaken extensive work on the life and thought of NZ 'heretic' Lloyd Geering.

Another focus is on radical theology and philosophy and in particular the social, cultural and philosophical impact of the death of God. This enables me to research and write on many issues and areas of modern life, including politics, culture, urban life and the wider area  of the sociology of knowledge. In turn this enables work and thought on various areas of  political economy, including the impact of  technology and the ongoing 'creative destruction' of capitalism.  

A further area  is broadly  New Zealand cultural nationalism and religion and also Pakeha (NZ white settler) identity and post colonial society.

A final interest is how editorial cartoons enable new and ongoing understandngs of NZ life, politics and society.

Prof Bronwyn Hayward (MNZM, FRSNZ) is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations and Director of The Sustainability, Citizenship and Civic Imagination Research group. Her research is at the intersection of sustainability, youth, climate change and democracy. Bronwyn has held many Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change roles:  a Review Editor (AR7 Ciites special report)  AR6 (Synthesis report 2023) Coordinating lead Cities & infrastructure (2022) and a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 Degrees C (2018). She is co-primary investigator with University of Surrey's ESRC funded CUSP: Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity, where she leads the CYCLES Children and Youth in Cities lifestyle Evaluation study in 7 world cities. A Co-PI of the National Science Challenge Mana Rangatahi, supporting Indigenous young people facing climate change (2022-2025). She held an Erskine Fellowship with University College, Oxford, UK 2017. Recent books Children, Citizenship and Environment (Routledge, 2012 and a significantly revised second #SchoolStrike edition Routledge London, 2021 and Sea Change: Climate Politics and New Zealand (BWB, 2017). She served on the International Social Sciences Council steering committee - Transformative Research; Co-researcher with University of Oslo, Voices of the Future project; Lead author on UNEP's global survey of 18-35 year olds lifestyles and sustainabilityl Trustee for the UK Foundation for Democracy and Sustainability 2012-2016. Outside academia Bronwyn worked for children's TV; was a Ministerial appointment to the NZ Broadcasting Standards Authority; Trustee for the SPARK Foundation & Give A Little. She was inaugural joint winner of UC Arts Conscience & Critic of Society Research Award 2014, Kiwibank Local Hero (2019) Westpac/Stuff media winner of Supreme Woman of Influence & Environment categories (2022), She is co-convenor of Adaptation Futures 2025 the world's premiere climate adaptation event October 2025

My research uses psycholinguistic methods to investigate how language relates to the human mind and brain. Specifically, my research program examines what information and how it guides language users’ acquisition and use of form and meaning by testing different languages and populations. My current research has two strands: (1) cross-linguistic research on reference form-meaning mappings, and (2) developmental research on sentence form-meaning acquisition in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

I coordinate the Language, Brain, and Behaviour specialisation. 

I research international political communication, especially how different channels of communication (e.g. media, elites, public opinion) can shape ideas, identity formation, and instititions - which in turn informs understandings and experiences of the world. Recent research has focused on the geopolitics of the South Pacific as well as European Relations with Aotearoa New Zealand. For example, I have investigated Aotearoa New Zealand’s mainstream media framing of AUKUS (the nuclear submarine alliance between Australia, the UK and the US) and the 2024 EU-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

I have 20 years of experience working with globally connected research teams from across Asia, the Pacific, North America, Africa and Europe. I believe today's problems require multidiciplinary, multicultural and international perspectives which requires international and transborder collaboration.

I welcome research collaboration and can provide a New Zealand perspective. For instance, I am actively looking to join a research team as part of Horizon Europe (of which New Zealand is an Associated Member). Topics of relevance include Cluster 2 (CL2), Democracy, Peace, Communication, Media, and Civil Society,

My research is internationally recognised and has been cited by academics and think tanks.

I have published in high impact journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Asia-Europe Journal, The Pacific Review, and Journal of Contemporary European Studies. Notable journal publications include:

My research areas include the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, EU-Asia Relations, media and perception studies, trade, diplomacy, and public diplomacy. My current postgraduate students come from a variety of nationalities, backgrounds and research foci. I warmly welcome interested postgraduate students particularly interested researching politics and international relations with case studies on Europe and Asia from a social science perspective. 

Professor Linda Jean Kenix is a media scholar in the School of Language, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Canterbury, specialising in media representation, alternative and mainstream media, and the portrayal of marginalised groups. The term 'marginalised groups' refers not only to people but to ideas and organisations. Her research explores how and why what is marginalised gains space on the media agenda - and how that media representation can then influence public opinion. Linda Jean's research has been published extensively in high-impact international journals, where she continues to explore how visual and textual media shape public understanding, how ideologies are communicated, and how media systems influence social change.

Linda Jean’s work spans agenda‑setting, identity representation, political communication, and digital media ecosystems, with a strong focus on how marginalised communities and social movements are framed across different media platforms. She is the author of Alternative and Mainstream Media: The Converging Spectrum, a widely cited contribution to the field of media and communication. In addition, Linda Jean has also co-edited Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics: Activist Nation Rising, which brought together leading scholars in the field to focus on the intersection between political parties, mainstream political news, and the production of participatory media. 

Linda Jean is Head of the School for Language, Social and Political Sciences (2017–present), which houses 13 distinct academic programmes and approximately 60 staff. She is also currently the Head of the Media and Communication programme.

Linda Jean is available for media commentary on social media, digital communication, political representation, and online public discourse.

Note for prospective graduate students: Linda Jean Kenix is currently accepting proposals from graduate students if their research aligns with her research interests.

Meredith Marra is Professor in Linguistics in School of Language, Social & Political Sciences. She teaches sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis from first year to PhD level, often taking a critical stance on the role of language in society.

She has been researching aspects of workplace discourse for more than 25 years and is Director of the Language in the Workplace Project. Her primary research interest is the language of business meetings, but she has also published in the areas of power, (im)politeness, humour and aspects of identity (especially gender and ethnic identity) in journals including the Journal of Pragmatics, Language in Society and Text & Talk.

Meredith is co-author of Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity (OUP, 2011) with the Language in the Workplace team, and co-editor of Constructing Identities at Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Negotiating Boundaries at Work (EUP, 2017) and Linguist at Work (VUP, 2017).

Donald studies journalism practice and public communication, including news discourse, social media and science communication. He has written on conflict reporting, communication ethics and discourse analysis. He has expertise in discourse analysis, including corpus-based discourse analysis. He writes on communication ethics and also co-edits Ethical Space, an international communication ethics journal. He is a co-director of UC's Media Innovation Lab, a lab that supports journalists to develop innovartion in factual storytelling.