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Exploring local food rescue and distribution initiatives as a form of community development
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Thomas, Lucy; Graham, Rebekah
This thesis explores how community food rescue initiatives in Kirikiriroa Hamilton respond to food insecurity - while fostering empowerment and community wellbeing. Despite Aotearoa New Zealand being a nation of agricultural abundance, approximately one in five children and one in four households experience food insecurity (DPMC, 2021; Child Poverty Action Group, 2019). This statistic reflects systemic inequalities which are rooted in neoliberal policy reforms rather than mere food availability. This research is informed by community psychology values and uses a Participatory Action Research (PAR) informed approach. This study employed participatory action research–informed qualitative design, using semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis to explore experiences of food rescue among facilitators and recipients in Kirikiriroa Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. The study interviewed seven participants, four recipients of food rescue and three facilitators of community food initiatives – all supported by Go Eco, a local food rescue organisation. The findings from interviews with both recipients and facilitators reveal that food rescue initiatives embody empowerment and provide support that makes a real positive difference in daily life. Yet the research also makes something clear, these initiatives, no matter how well-intentioned or skilfully run cannot fix the systems that create food insecurity in the first place. The food rescue initiatives are not a preventative approach to food security, yet a band-aid problem which provides essential basic needs to community members. This research deepens understanding on how community-driven approaches can protect dignity and foster wellbeing, even amid precarity and food hardship. At the same time, the research makes it clear that this work only exists because structural supports have failed. Meaningful change requires confronting inadequate welfare provisions, living costs that very much outpace incomes and benefits, and the neoliberal framing that positions poverty as personal failure rather than policy failure. The study offers insights for community organisations, policymakers and community psychologists.
Can concentration-varied secondary target training improve generalisation across primary target concentrations in scent-detection dogs?
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Bhasin, Ishan; Edwards, Timothy L.
Scent-detection dogs are often expected to identify target odours across a range of concentrations, despite typically being trained using a single baseline concentration. This raises the possibility that concentration changes may disrupt stimulus control and reduce accurate responding in applied settings. Previous research suggests that dogs may show limited generalisation when target quantity or concentration differs substantially from training, indicating that concentration may be a functionally important dimension of olfactory stimulus control. The present study examined whether dogs trained to detect target odours at a single concentration would spontaneously generalise responding to higher concentrations of those same odours. Three dogs were trained using an automated olfactometer to discriminate two target odours, cinnamaldehyde and hexanoic acid, from non-target odours. After discrimination training, novel non-target testing, and intermittent reinforcement training, two dogs completed non-reinforced probe trials involving higher-concentration variants of the trained target odours. Probe responding differed systematically across odours. For both dogs, indications to higher-concentration hexanoic acid probes were more frequent than indications to non-targets, but less frequent than indications to the trained target, consistent with partial generalisation. In contrast, indications to the higher-concentration cinnamaldehyde probe overlapped with indications to non-targets, suggesting little reliable transfer of stimulus control. These findings suggest that training at a single concentration may not be sufficient to support robust generalisation across concentration changes and highlight the importance of treating concentration as a relevant training dimension in scent-detection training.
Staying with our trouble: Disease and dis-ease in sick-lit & eco-fiction from Aotearoa New Zealand
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Rogers, Heidi Lee; Chidgey, Catherine; Long, Maebh; Slaughter, Tracey
In this thesis, I compare depictions of disease by Māori and Pākehā/European authors of young adult fiction, demonstrating that while Pākehā illness narratives tend to employ the microscope, and individualise disease through a form of narrative containment and compartmentalisation reflective of a Western world view, Māori illness narratives tend to employ the macroscope, and collectivise disease, moving the focus from the individual to broader human and other-than-human environments. However, I argue the containment observed in pre-COVID Pākehā illness narratives appears to be disintegrating, as post-pandemic publications move into closer alignment with Māori-authored narratives, which combine elements of sick-lit and eco-fiction genres. Further, I argue that within these Pākehā texts, te ao Māori (the Māori world) offers healing for Pākehā characters, yet the fundamental concerns driving Māori-authored fiction—namely, the dis-eases rooted in colonial capitalism, such as, for example, intergenerational grief, trauma, and inequity—are left largely unearthed. Though disease appears to be ubiquitous in Māori fiction, I found Māori characters are often absent from Pākehā-authored hospital-based sick-lit, and relegated to the margins in Pākehā-authored eco-fiction, where they appear healthy, and content to support the goals of dis-eased Pākehā. In contrast to their fallible Pākehā counterparts, I argue these Māori side-characters are limited by “goodness”, and are at risk of being reduced to a kind of “herbal supplement”, as Pākehā authors fail to address the conflicts and disparities between Māori and Pākehā worlds: a vital aspect of our local ecology that I propose cannot, in good faith, be divorced from realist Aotearoa New Zealand eco-fiction, given the significance of Land Back and decolonisation movements to the health and wellbeing of our Treaty partners, and arguably, to all New Zealanders. Despite disparities in representation, I argue Māori and Pākehā authors of young adult eco-fiction essentially identify the same “poison” and “medicine”—respectively: toxic masculinity, and reconnection with the other. In conclusion, this thesis presents my original young adult novel, which incorporates aspects of human and environmental disease and dis-ease I argue are underrepresented in local young adult fiction by Pākehā authors. Tāne and the Invisibles follows a queer Pākehā protagonist and her Māori and Tauiwi friends as they navigate eco-anxiety, anticipatory grief, and the uncertainties surrounding their increasingly complex relationships with Self, each other, and the human and other-than-human Other.
Understanding dis/ableism in sport coaching
(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026-05-07) Townsend, Robert C.; Randrup, Kelsey; Clare, Olivia; Roberts, William M.
This chapter provides an overview of the rapidly evolving field of coaching in disability and para sport. In adopting a critical position, we argue that coaching in disability sport is more than adapting practice—it requires a critical understanding of the social and cultural factors shaping disabled athletes’ experiences in sport and the role coaching plays in either resisting or reinforcing dominant narratives of disability. We provide readers with the theoretical language to interrogate the intersections of disability, sport, and coaching, drawing from Critical Disability Studies (CDS) to introduce the concepts of disablism and ableism, and how these are implicated in coaching discourse, practice, and coach education. In providing researchers and practitioners with a sensitising framework drawn from critical disability studies, we argue for more participatory and inclusive approaches to coaching research—ensuring that the field collectively moves beyond accommodation and towards transformation.
Simple lambda lifting: Formalisation in Lean and a new efficient algorithm
(ACM, 2026) Levy, Tom; Reeves, Steve
Lambda lifting is a technique used in compilers to convert nested function definitions to top-level function definitions. A series of papers has led to an 𝑂(𝑛2) algorithm, however it is complex. We present a simple 𝑂(𝑛2) algorithm for lambda lifting and prove its correctness. We also formalise a lambda lifting specification from the literature in Lean 4, and use that to prove some of the properties and test our algorithm on generated test cases. One of our contributions is to formalise the notion of a “complete” and “minimal” lifting, addressing a small issue with the handling of unused functions that to our knowledge affects all previous algorithms.