Hear from our experts

Bhakti Patel's passion for the ocean comes from a lifelong dream of becoming a marine biologist. A career in marine science spanning over 10 years has seen her conduct research from the northern to the southern reaches of Aotearoa’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Bhakti has been fortunate to work for The University of Auckland, BLAKE, and now Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Annika Andresen wants to take every New Zealander to our ocean, to fall in love, and to fight for its survival. As a former environmental educator, she has inspired over 40,000 students across the North Island to connect with our marine environment. This project brings together Annika’s passion for the ocean, design, and communication. Born with a sense of adventure, she is currently conducting marine expeditions worldwide, connecting scientists, indigenous peoples, and the public. Bhakti and Annika want to bridge the gap between science and the public. Using different forms of communication, they share their knowledge and experience in the hope of encouraging Kiwis to take action to protect our ocean. Why? Because “It’s too important not to. For all of us” - Sir Peter Blake.

Charlotte is a Research Assistant in the Collection and Information and Access team at Auckland Museum, working on several projects. She has degrees in EarthScience and Geography from the University of Auckland and during her Master’s looked at the impact that the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake had on river systems. Charlotte has worked on volcanic research and hazard outreach in both Auckland and Taranaki.

Thomas is a Collection Technician, working with both the Collection and Information and Access team on cataloguing and digitising Auckland Museum’s palaeontology collection, and with the Natural Sciences team on collecting and studying the fossils recovered during Watercare’s Central Interceptor project. In addition to this, he is involved with coordinating the Determining Volcanic Risk in Auckland (DEVORA) research program at the University of Auckland, which assesses volcanic hazards and risks in Auckland, and aims to improve the city’s resilience to future volcanic threats..

Victoria Passau has worked at Auckland War Memorial Museum since 2014. She is responsible for the management of Enquiries and Online Cenotaph as a digital product and works with Auckland Museum’s diverse content partners and collaborators. She has also developed as deep understanding of how personal memory and commemoration can enrich official histories.

Victoria obtained an Masters of Library and Information Studies from Victoria University of Wellington and holds an advisory role as one of the Guardians Kaitiaki of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Leone Samu Tui (Ngati Hāmoa, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) is Associate Curator Pacific Documentary Heritage at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckalnd War Memorial Museum.

Leone began her museum career as a volunteer in the Te Kakano Information Centre and progressed to working on key collections projects over the past fourteen years, including the upgrade of Online Cenotaph and the ground-breaking Pacific Collection Access Project between 2016-2019.

Engagement with Auckland’s Pacific communities and activating the museum’s Teu le Vā Pacific dimension remains a key influence on her museum praxis

Guided by a curiosity for forgotten stories held by objects that are often overlooked, Grace Lai is an art historian and curator who engages with material culture as a decoder of the immaterial, to question areas relevant not only to Museums and their collections but contemporary society.

Currently, Grace is the Curator of Applied Arts & Design at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum where she leads the exhibition, development and research of a nationally significant archive of craft from Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad.

Her collection centered work focuses on strengthening the representation of marginalised stories through both collection development and research. In 2019, Grace delivered the exhibition “Carried Away: Bags Unpacked” which took a deep dive into a single object as a lens to unpack wider social-cultural issues; including colonialism, economy, gender politics and whakapapa.

Originally from small-town Manitoba, Val is a Conservator at Auckland Museum. She has worked here for the last 12 years.

Her past life took her through various careers, including being a chemist, where her early work involved nuking blueberries for Atomic Energy of Canada, and other nuclear research work in Germany. She started out in chemistry because of her background coming from a town full of nuclear scientists, but she rapidly realised that chemistry was not her life’s ambition. Val turned to art school after her chemistry degree, but she also found that art was not her true calling either.

Val found her calling following a summer job where she joined a Kung Fu club. She loved it so much that she had to find a new degree to do in order to stay, which is how she discovered conservation. Since then, she has worked as a conservator at multiple heritage institutions around the world in Canada, England, Norway, and now in New Zealand.

While between conservation contracts, Val worked for several years in the Canadian Arctic as a librarian at a research centre. This took her through such well-known librarian tasks as: navigating a helicopter to Grizzly bear dens for a researcher; working as a site conservator on an archaeological dig on an Inuit house on a (now) uninhabited arctic island; and retrieving a prehistoric Steppe Bison from the permafrost for the Canadian Museum community. She also flew search and rescue missions as a navigator in her spare time.

Madison’s love of history and education led her to work in the museum sector for Online Cenotaph. Currently, she manages the Online Cenotaph enquiries, answering questions from researchers, veterans, friends, and whānau.

Madison also cares for the stories of New Zealand’s veterans, interviewing surviving veterans of recent conflicts and sharing their experiences of serving for their country. In addition, Madison works with other collection teams and historians to research interesting tales, and write up little-known histories of New Zealand’s service personnel for Cenotaph Stories.

James Taylor is the Online Collections Information & Partnerships Manager at Auckland Museum. He manages the Museum’s Collections Online and is responsible for the over twenty online platforms and partnerships the Museum shares its open data and imagery with. Prior to working at the Museum he was employed at Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision in a variety of public access and engagement roles and has also worked as a public historian.