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Research Commons is the University of Waikato's open access research repository, housing research publications and theses produced by the University's staff and students.
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Publication Te mana o te wahine: Young mothers healthcare experiences in pregnancy, birth, and into motherhood(Thesis, The University of Waikato, 2024)In Aotearoa-New Zealand being a young mother is often associated with clinical and societal ‘risks.’ Younger women have higher rates of maternal depression and suicide, complications during birth, and their babies are more likely to be born preterm, and of smaller gestational age and weight (Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee, 2012; Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand, 2023b, 2023a). Research also indicates that young mothers experience stigmatisation and discrimination that they attribute to their age and/or ethnicity (Adcock, 2016; Makowharemahihi et al., 2014; Rawiri, 2007; Ware, 2019). In discussion with researchers, discrimination was the topic that young mothers at He Puaawai Teen Parent Centre wanted to talk about. They shared a strong desire to see change in the way that doctors, nurses, and midwives service young parents and were passionate about ensuring that future young mothers had more support. Thus, in responding to their call, 22 parents, including two fathers attending (or recent school-leavers of) He Puaawai Teen Parent Centre volunteered to participate in this study. This qualitative kaupapa Māori study employed a series of wānanga, individual kōrero, and an investigator-triangulation thematic analysis. The research questions explored both the positive and negative healthcare experiences of this cohort during pregnancy, birth, and into motherhood. The aim of this study was to listen and learn about the experiences of these young parents and co-design informational and/or educational materials to help healthcare practitioners better understand and support young mothers/parents. To spread awareness of the experiences of these young parents, the co-design materials and findings of this study were disseminated via various healthcare seminars and meetings around the Waikato region. The findings of this study contribute to previous research that revealed over the last 20 years young parents have continued to report predominantly negative experiences in their maternity journey. Participants of this study reported experiences of unsolicited judgement and advice, a general lack of manaakitanga (care, empathy, respect), communication, and support from doctors, nurses, and midwives. The relatively small number of positive experiences shared in this study emphasises the importance of manaakitanga regardless of age. An unexpected finding was the impact that receptionists had on young parents’ healthcare experiences, as the face and entry point of healthcare services.Item Fakalukuluku: Conceptualising a tongan learning approach in tertiary education(Journal Article, University of Waikato, 2021)Given the current impact of COVID-19, the learning experiences of Pasifika students within tertiary education has implicated their social and emotional wellbeing. Engaging in a Tongan learning approach, such as fakalukuluku, can present a viable learning practice for tertiary students’ learning experiences. This paper presents the perspectives of four Tongan-born and raised researchers and educators who completed their tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on our experiences and reflections, we propose the Tongan concept of fakalukuluku as an approach to help elevate students’ academic achievement in tertiary education. Our paper conceptualises and unfolds perspectives of fakalukuluku, as a cultural practice that is appropriate, collaborative, and accorded learning stability because of its spiritual dimensions as being paramount to students’ success. We propose that a strong family and community support, the utilising of university learning support and the students’ spiritual beliefs can help Tongan students in tertiary education succeed.Publication Disability and assistive technology advancements in disability sport: Understanding the embodied experiences of disabled athletes(Thesis, The University of Waikato, 2024-10-05)The World Health Organisation estimates that one billion disabled people currently rely on assistive technology in their day-to-day activities. Yet, the participation of disabled people in sports remains significantly low, often due to inadequate access to assistive technology needed to participate, train and compete. Meanwhile, the use of assistive technology in sport has raised critical questions about disability, access, and equity in culture and society. In disability sports, the use of assistive technology by athletes has often been simplified with notions of ‘cyborgification’, and popular discourses positioning them as ‘superhuman’, or ‘posthuman’. While this is problematic, little is known about how one’s impaired experience, self, and mind impact the use of assistive technology in disability sport. Given this, in this research, I sought to enhance the understanding of the role of assistive technology for disabled athletes with a focus on embodied experiences. Particularly, the various ways that disabled people use, interact with and embody assistive technology throughout their engagement in disability sport. Using embodiment as a theoretical lens, the research drew on a critical qualitative framework, encompassing ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation. I used these methods to complement each other to deeply explore the embodied experiences of twelve disabled athletes with various physical impairments who use assistive technology across different sports. In this research, assistive technology was fundamentally woven into the lives of disabled individuals and plays a crucial role in shaping an identity that challenges traditional norms and perceptions in disability sport. By becoming socially embodied, assistive technology transformed physical impairments and self-perceptions, enabling athletes to achieve technological competency in their athletic pursuits. The findings revealed that athletes experience a sense of embodied freedom, positioning themselves as active agents in their sport. This was facilitated by the high level of customization of their assistive devices and their proactive approach to seeking adjustments and modifications to enhance their performance. Importantly, using assistive technology involved an embodied knowledge and learning process that addressed pain, fatigue, and impairment limitations. These experiences helped normalise the subjectivities of the disabled athletic body, illustrating how assistive technologies can symbolize and support integration and a sense of belonging in sport. Broadly, this research challenged discursive accounts that theorised the blurry boundaries of using assistive technologies by centralising the lived experience, voices and accounts of disabled athletes. Doing so enabled me to challenge the dualist or binary notions (i.e. human-nonhuman and artificial-biological) that dominate discussion about how disabled athletes incorporate assistive technology into their bodily experience of sport. By thinking with and through embodiment, the research illustrated the unique, hybrid identity of disabled athletes; skilful, athletic, fluid and the constant shift between the empowering and at times restrictive nature of assistive technology. Despite this positivity, disabled athletes still face inequitable access to assistive technology, and the research highlights the importance of embodied belonging and community in learning how to participate, train and compete with assistive technologies. Taken together, the implications of this research demonstrate the need for better opportunities, provision, services and policies for disabled people to access assistive technology as a means of participating in sport. Importantly, we can understand how the relationship between disability and assistive technology can be perceived, felt, and embodied as one being.Publication Paper trains(Thesis, The University of Waikato, 2024)In the end, it keeps coming back to that. How we’ve got to move past each other. I tell your story in a way that somehow still makes it all about me. I count the trains, burn Bible paper. I’m left inconsolable on the dance floor. I try to paint a bowl of fruit and it always ends up being a self-portrait. I suppose that’s life. You reach your hands out for others, but they’re still your hands. A train is late to the station. Dogs howl in the night. A kitchen tap drips without sound. Lungs fill with lake water. Books remain unread. Words, unspoken. Paper Trains is a narrative-driven collection of poems exploring how people move through grief and the places it can take them. After losing her best friend, the narrator of these poems latches on to everything she can to keep herself afloat. Bad omens, old jackets, blue paper cranes. We follow her journey as she navigates both devastating loss and the unrest of her early 20s. There are ways to stay busy: house parties, coffee shops, home renovation, self-pity, gardening. She moves through spaces to delay moving on. We witness the effects that death has on her relationships with others and the burdens that she must now carry. This is a tale of violence, anger, and isolation. Of forgetting and remembering again. Betrayal. Begrudging hope. Superstitions and bad life choices. Trains always running late.Publication Computational Nanobiosensing – Drawing Analogies Between Optimisation and Nanobiosensing for Smart Tumour Targeting(Thesis, The University of Waikato, 2024)Nanotechnology has been rapidly developing for early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, with nanoparticles being a large focus. However, traditional drug delivery mechanisms are passive and inefficient, with only 0.7% of nanoparticles reaching the tumour through blood vasculature. In vivo computation, also known as computational nanobiosensing (CONA), replaces nanoparticles with swarms of externally manipulable nanorobots whose movement is controlled by an external actuating system. The biological problem of smart tumour targeting is viewed from the computational perspective as an optimisation problem: nanorobot swarms (computational agents) explore the blood vasculature of high-risk tissue (search space) to locate the tumour (global optimum). Tumour biological gradient fields (BGF) create a fitness landscape, which can be analysed with fitness landscape analysis (FLA) to select and tune appropriate search algorithms for in vivo computation. Key limitations of previous work for in vivo computation are a lack of realistic BGFs that reflect the tumour microenvironment to test search algorithms on; and for FLA, no available measures that consider physical constraints of the in vivo environment. Two realistic tumour BGF models were created using COMSOL Multiphysics software (CFD Module), one highly vascularised, the other less vascularised. The vascular architecture was based on in vivo blood vessel networks in healthy and tumour regions, and blood velocity was used as a BGF. Blood velocity was found to be lowest in the tumour region, not exceeding 100 µm/s, confirming its applicability as a BGF for search algorithm testing. Three new FLA measures were created and validated with numerical simulations on two possible tumour vascular landscapes. These measures addressed the physical constraints of discrete search space, unidirectional blood flow, and nanorobot steering imperfections when using a uniform magnetic field. The less vascularized landscape was found to be more discrete, more heterogeneous, and contain a smaller countercurrent frequency of search direction. This indicated it would be more challenging to solve for than the highly vascularised landscape. These advancements of the CONA framework allow the in vivo search environment to be better visualised and understood for algorithmic development, as well as provide realistic BGFs to test these search algorithms on.
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