Hoahoa mō te Auahatanga ā-Pāpori, Tohu PaeruaPostgraduate Design for Social Innovation

David's research explores how mātauranga Māori, whakapapa, and pūrākau can inform a contemporary Māori design language that is culturally grounded while responding to modern contexts. His work moves beyond the use of Māori motifs as decoration, focusing instead on creating meaningful design outcomes that express identity, place, and cultural responsibility.

Working across industrial design, public art, and architectural integration, David combines traditional making practices with contemporary digital fabrication technologies, including CNC machining, laser cutting, 3D printing, and interactive media. He is interested in how these tools can be used in ways that uphold tikanga and acknowledge mātauranga Māori.

Central to his practice is the belief that meaningful Māori design begins with relationships. Through collaboration with iwi, communities, and stakeholders, his work explores themes of whakapapa, kaitiakitanga, transformation, and belonging, translating these into contemporary visual and spatial experiences.

Alongside his research, David is passionate about design education, encouraging students to engage critically with culture, context, and ethics while developing their own creative practice.

Nan is the founder and lead researcher in the post graduate Research Hub, the Social Lab. Incentivised to challenge and grow design's capacity to contribute to positive change, Nan's research seeks to navigate and recalibrate design and its capacity to lead positive social and environmental impact. Her work promotes indigenous knowledge as a guiding light to positive change and aligns with the emergent design provocation, Transition Design, as a pathway to enable this. Nan often speaks at international conferences, universities, and institutes about the need to make space in our curriculums for Indigenous wisdom and diverse ways of seeing, doing and being. She specifically highlights the value of tikanga Māori, (Māori values and protocols), mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and place-based knowledge to the design of sustainable and sustaining futures. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/design-innovation/research/research-groups/social-design-lab. https://victoria.academia.edu/NanOSullivan

Training Indigenous AI (AIRI)- He Ara Mauri Framework: Building ethical neuromorphic AI Architecture with Mātauranga. 

Mātauranga Māori & Indigenous Knowledge systems
Native plant fibres for new textiles and materials (circular systems)
Te Taiao (Environment), climate, biodiversity (land & ocean) recovery, community resilience, rematriation, land back
Rongoā (Indigenous medicinal knowledge/ food sovereignty & recovery)
Navigation / Mapping / stories - from an Indigenous perspective
Transitional/ regenerative/ net positive design
Indigenous futurisms, Indigenous speculative design, Indigenous speculative fiction
Mātauranga Māori, Indigenous Sovereignty, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Indigenous AI
Pluriversal methodologies/ design
Speculative design
Community arts engagement
Social Innovation
Cultivating the Imaginarium & Futuring New Worlds
Contemporary Art
Digital art & technology
Photography/ Video/ Film/ Sound/ Drawing/ Painting installations
Visual storytelling

Art and design in the context of the Anthropocene and/or socio-ecological polycrisis.
Trauma-informed art and design.
Speculative, adversarial, and activist design.