David Small

After completing a BA in Education and Political Science and working for several years for an aid and development organisation, I completed a PhD in Education on the Politics of Colonial Education in New Caledonia. I have spent my academic career teaching and researching at the University of Canterbury mostly at the intersection of Education and Politics including critical analysis of the neoliberal model of education and the role of education in the development of and challenges to the colonisation of New Zealand. In 2010 I also completed an LlB and have held a lawyer's practising certificate ever since. I also teach a postgrad course on Education Law and have researched and published in the area of law, rights and the war on terror. I have retained an interest in New Caledonia throughout having first visited there in 1983 after attending the Fourth Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference in Vanuatu. I spent December 2023 in New Caledonia on the island of Ouvéa where the 1988 massacre of 19 Kanak activists occurred and in Nouméa where I attended meetings of the CCAT and the Mouvement des Océaniens Indépendantistes.