Shaping Aotearoa New Zealand

A conversation between the author and two panellists well-versed to comment on the political, economic, and cultural changes of recent history.

Seminar Series—Between the Lines: Recent Books in New Zealand Studies

Shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand—The Revolutionaries who Reworked a Nation and Its Culture
By Colin James

27 May 2026

The Stout Centre’s seminar series highlighting recent books concludes with Colin James’ Shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book ponders the ‘revolution’ of the 1980s as New Zealand opened its economy, liberalised its society and mores and set course towards a self-defining bicultural future. It explores the question of who drove this revolution. What New Zealand did these ‘upstarts’ inherit? What Aotearoa/New Zealand did they leave behind?

Join us for a conversation between the author and two panellists well versed to comment on the political, economic and cultural changes of recent history—journalist/scholar Danyl McLauchlan and the School of Government’s Arthur Grimes.