At its heart, my research is about texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous people. My work is underpinned by my belief that Indigenous peoples are constrained when the stories about them are limited.

Working from a longterm interest in (and aroha for) Māori writing that started during undergraduate studies at the University of Auckland, for my PhD in English (with a graduate minor in American Indian Studies) at Cornell I deliberately sought broader contexts for exploring Māori literature. This led me to develop a twin interest and expertise in Indigenous studies and Pacific studies, and since my first academic appointment in 2005 I have written and taught at the intersections of Indigenous, Pacific, literary and cultural studies.