People, Environment and Planning research

Our research helps local and global communities understand and respond to diverse challenges in areas such as sustainability, security, built environments and social equality.

Research groups

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Centre for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS)

CDSS is advancing the security of Aotearoa, the Asia-Pacific region and the world through its multidisciplinary research and New Zealand's only specialist education in defence and security studies.

Centre for Defence & Security Studies

HOPE Collective

The HOPE Collective is an interdisciplinary research collective exploring hope and hopeful teaching in higher education to reimagine university learning as a space for transformation.

Reimagining South Pacific tourism post-pandemic

Reimagining South Pacific tourism post-pandemic seeks to put the South Pacific at the forefront of developing tourism that benefits both people and the planet. The knowledge from this project will support Indigenous development through tourism in the fut

Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities

The 'Transitioning to caring economies through transformative community investment' project explores how economies can prioritise people, culture and the environment over profit.

Highlighted research

Explore a selection of research projects, including 2 awarded grants from the Marsden Fund Te Pūtea Rangahau.

Farm Next Door local food study

Associate Professor Sita Venkateswar

Massey researchers have been part of a Taranaki initiative, Farm Next Door, to collaborate with small-scale growers who farm sustainably, organically or regeneratively to earn money and supply produce for the community. The project aims to better understand this growing movement and shift mindsets around food production.

HOPE in Higher Education

There is increasing focus on climate anxiety, despair and hopelessness among university students. Less work has been done to understand how teachers embed hope in learning environments. Hope in Higher Education is a research project that aims to explore hope-based pedagogies.

Research team members

Dr Alice Beban, Associate Professor Elaine Khoo, Dr Clare Mouat and Lisa Vonk.

Find out more about Hope in Higher Education

Pacific projects on COVID and climate change

Re-imagining South Pacific tourism

This project explores how indigenous people in tourism have been affected by COVID-19, and how they have responded. It investigates how tourism can be re-imagined in more sustainable and equitable ways by building on indigenous knowledge.

Reimagining South Pacific tourism post-pandemic

Understanding change in the Pacific from the inside

Professor Glenn Banks

Climate refugees and disappearing islands loom large in predictions of Pacific futures. But local knowledge has been marginalised in academic and policy discussions. This research, led by palagi and Pacific researchers, will produce a co-constructed understanding of change.

Reduce, reuse, repair New kinds of waste-conscious initiatives in circular and postcapitalist economies

Professor Kelly Dombroski, Dr Lila Laird

Conventional approaches to researching waste reduction try to get individuals to change their attitudes and behaviours, often focusing on actions like recycling. But this approach frequently fails to reduce waste, as most of us have little ability to change the wider systems that create waste in the first place. Instead of focusing on individuals, this research project asks how people act together to reduce waste and bring about collective change. How does involvement in community waste-reduction organisations affect people’s everyday habits and relationships? And how can people act together to create widespread social change that stops objects and materials from becoming waste in the first place?

Funded by the Marsden Fund

The World Values Survey in New Zealand

Principal Investigator: Paul Perry, Sociologist and Honorary Research Associate in the School of People, Environment and Planning

The World Values Survey is a unique international social science project that has seen representative sample surveys undertaken roughly every 5 years, using a common and very extensive questionnaire containing hundreds of items, in anywhere from roughly 50 to 80 different countries in any 1 wave. New Zealand, via Massey University, has been part of this project since 1985, completing the latest wave in late 2019.

New Zealand has completed 6 waves through Massey University.

The questionnaire covers hundreds of items seeking people’s attitudes and values about things such as politics and government, religion, work, the environment, gender roles, community participation, the Treaty, life satisfaction and more. This allows us to see how people’s views have been changing over time since the 1980s, as well as comparing the values and attitudes of people in different countries.

For a general overview, visit the World Values Survey website

Transitioning to caring economies through transformative community investment

Professor Kelly Dombroski, Swarnima Kriti, Kelsi Henderson, Daena Moller

Since 2022, the 'Transitioning to Caring Economies' project has combined community‑based research with theoretical development to advance new ways of understanding how economies can prioritise people, culture and the environment over profit. Working with community organisations in Porirua, India and Horowhenua, the project examines how collective investments of time, energy, and resources shape more caring and sustainable forms of economic life. As a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, the project has also supported the development of research leadership by building new theory from these partnerships, reshaping how economic change is understood and practised in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Learn more on the project's website Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities