The Rutherford Discovery Fellowships (RDF) are one of New Zealand’s premier research-funding awards. Administered by Royal Society Te Apārangi, they support outstanding early- to mid-career researchers for a five-year term so they can focus on ambitious research programmes and build teams of the future. Royal Society of New Zealand
In 2020, Siautu Alefaio-Tugia – founder of NIUPATCH – was awarded an RDF for her project titled “Redefining the humanitarian landscape: Pacific-diasporic disaster resilience”. This makes her only the fourth Pacific person, and the sole Pacific recipient in that year, to have received this award — a clear signal of both prestige and the importance of the Pacific research lens she brings.
Through this funding, NIUPATCH’s work has explored how Pacific communities in Aotearoa and beyond experience and respond to disasters — whether natural hazards, health crises or other disruptions. The research shines a light on culturally-grounded, community-driven responses — for example, how Pacific churches, family networks, and other informal structures step in when formal systems lag behind. Niupatch+1
In particular, under the RDF-supported research stream, NIUPATCH’s team is supervising PhD projects that investigate – for example – the role of Pacific churches and faith in disaster resilience, and the distinctive health-response mechanisms in Pacific communities. These outputs (and more to come) are helping to reshape how we think about disaster preparation and recovery in the Pacific region.