About the Hub

The Hub connects students, graduates, and lawyers with academics and policymakers to create a better legal system for all New Zealanders.

Mālō e lelei, and warm Pacific greetings.

This project began as a response to something many of us have experienced: Pacific legal research is often hard to find, hard to fund, and rarely given the space, visibility, and recognition it deserves.

Much of the work being done, especially by students and early-career researchers, is important but scattered across institutions or hidden from public view. As a result, valuable insights are often lost, emerging scholars struggle to gain traction, and opportunities for collaboration are missed.

This happens not only across the region, but also within research that focuses on issues that matter to the region.

The Pacific Legal Research Hub was created to help change that. It is a platform that exists to brings our work together, supports Pacific-relevant research, and makes it easier for others to find, use, and build on.

Our goal is to create a space where Pacific legal thinking can grow. This means supporting work that is grounded in our region, our contexts, and our ways of being and knowing. We want to make research more visible and more connected, while building relationships across academia, government, and community.

On this site, you will find:

• research across six key themes, including constitutional reform, customary law, climate change, and human rights
• profiles of the people behind the work
• recordings and resources from recent symposia and events
• an archive of publications and presentations.

In the long term, we hope the Hub becomes more than just a website. We want it to serve as a living resource that supports, promotes, and platforms Pacific legal research at every stage, showcases the depth of thinking across our region, and strengthens the networks that sustain this work. Our aim is for the Hub to be a place where research is not only shared, but also recognised, built upon, and used to inform real change across institutions, communities, and generations.

Whether you are a student, a policymaker, a researcher, or simply curious, this Hub is for you. We hope it helps you learn something, make a connection, or share your own work.

Dr Mele Tupou Vaitohi
Research Lead
Senior Lecturer in Law