Meet our faculty

Keziah is a Māori anthropologist with whakapapa links to the Kāi Tahu iwi of the South Island of New Zealand. She completed her education at the University of Otago with a BA in Asian Studies, Postgraduate Diploma in Film & Media Studies, and a PhD in Social Anthropology and Religious Studies.  Before coming to join UFV, Keziah taught at both Otago University and Victoria University of Wellington in a variety of departments including Social Anthropology, Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Film Studies. As an Indigenous anthropologist, Keziah has a commitment to working towards decolonization of both teaching and research.

BA in Asian Studies
Postgraduate Diploma in Film & Media Studies
PhD in Social Anthropology and Religious Studies

ANTH102 Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology

ANTH130 Religion and Culture

ANTH268 Culture and Environment

ANTH344 Indigenous Research Methodologies

ANTH388 Indigenous Peoples of the World

Keziah is also happy to supervise ANTH 490 Directed Studies courses on topics related to Indigenous communities, Southeast Asian cultures (especially Myanmar), and the anthropology of religion.

Keziah’s research interests include identity, being, and connectedness in the Asia-Pacific region as well as Indigenous relationships with popular culture texts. She has conducted ethnographic research in Myanmar on lived religion and women’s experiences of Buddhism and is currently writing a book based on her doctoral dissertation about the role of reincarnation in Burmese understandings of connectedness. Keziah also conducts research in New Zealand on the relationship between cultural memory of the colonial past and contemporary race relations between Māori and Pākehā (non-Māori). As an Indigenous anthropologist, Keziah also has an ongoing interest in the decolonization of both teaching and research and has been working towards developing newer research methods for anthropological fieldwork with Indigenous communities.

Journal Articles

Wallis, Keziah, and Miriam Ross. ‘Fourth VR: Indigenous Virtual Reality Practice’. Convergence, 30 July 2020. 

Wallis, Keziah. ‘Indigenous Cinema, the Camera Ashore, and House Made of Dawn’. Continuum, forthcoming.

Wallis, Keziah. ‘Nats in the Land of the Hintha: Village Religion in Lower Myanmar’. Journal of Burma Studies, forthcoming.