Staff celebrate their success at Manawatū graduation

Alongside their fellow students, they walked across the stage at The Regent on Broadway to have their degrees conferred.

Here’s a snippet of some of their successes:

Dr Margreet Hekman

Research Officer Dr Margreet Hekman received her PhD last week. Her research examined the physiological effects of dietary water in cats. Domestic cats mainly eat low moisture diets, unlike their wild relatives.

Dr Margreet Hekman studied cats fed high and low moisture diets and found that when cats were fed low moisture diets, they had lower water intake but higher urine concentration, and higher after-meal plasma and vasopressin (anti-diuretic hormone) concentrations. These effects were more pronounced in aging cats and may be important in diseased cats.

In 2004, she started working in the monogastric nutrition group as a technician, after a few years, the technician role became more teaching-focussed, where she taught cat handling to vet students, as well as helping with lab demonstrations for other courses.

“As a technician, you do all the technical work for a trial, but you don’t actually get the whole picture of ‘idea to published paper’. This left me feeling a bit unfulfilled with my work, so I decided to do a PhD. During my internship for my undergraduate degree, I worked on dietary moisture in cats and since then that topic has always been special to me. That’s where the journey into the physiological effects of dietary water in cats began.”

Dr Ross Hebden

Dr Ross Hebden came to Massey as an engineering and automation student, after being waitlisted to join the police force closer to home in Palmerston North. It was timing and StudyLink requirements that steered him towards psychology.

“I had to take some papers to fill in the gaps and ended up choosing some psychology papers. One was led by the late Dr Alan Winton, a wiry, tall and energetic lecturer who quite literally prowled around the front of the theatre while teaching and helped me realise how fascinating psychology is. I quit engineering and moved towards courses that interested me across media studies, philosophy and psychology.”

Now graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy, Dr Hebden’s fascination with the rise of social media and how it influences the established norms of communication to form the basis of how we ‘do society’ directed his line of research. His PhD research explored the impact of smartphones on young adult drinking cultures through shaping social interactions and normalising alcohol marketing.

Building on the work he completed for his psychology master’s thesis, Dr Hebden’s focus included understanding how social media influences alcohol marketing in these spaces, which he says will inform public health policy and direction. Now a lecturer himself in the School of Psychology, Dr Hebden plans to continue his research in the field of his thesis and expand on it.

Dr Sesimani Havea

When an exciting opportunity presented itself to pursue further study, Pacific Postgraduate Learning Advisor Dr Sesimani Havea decided it was time to take her studies to the next level. After completing her studies and likening it to a long marathon with lots of bumps and twists along the way, Dr Havea graduated with her PhD last week, with her family by her side.

Dr Havea has been part of the Massey whānau in a variety of roles for almost 10 years. The main theme throughout her roles has been how she nurtures and cares for people. Her role sits within the newly established Pacific Student Success team, which provides learning support for Pacific postgraduate students to ensure that they achieve their academic aspirations.

Her PhD explored violence amongst kainga (families) in Aotearoa New Zealand and how applying a faith-based approach can reduce violence and the associated negative impacts.

“The study was built on a formative evaluation that I was involved in of the first Tongan faith-based family violence programme in New Zealand. Developing and conducting faith-based research and initiatives to address social issues with Tongan and Pacific people has always been a personal passion. When this opportunity arose, I decided to take on the challenge because there is next to no literature exploring my subject area, especially within the psychology space.”

Other staff to graduate included:

• Michael Buhagiar - Bachelor of Animal Science
• Anna-Leigh Gillies - Master of Science
• Elnaz Gorbani - Master of Science
• Akshay Bisht - Doctor of Philosophy
• Sidra Hussain - Doctor of Philosophy
• Merit Mathew - Doctor of Philosophy
• Hannah Morton - Doctor of Philosophy
• Abhipray Paturkar - Doctor of Philosophy
• Inthujaa Sanjayaranj - Doctor of Philosophy
• Suha Sanwar - Doctor of Philosophy
• Israr Wahid - Doctor of Philosophy
• Franziska Weik - Doctor of Philosophy
• Mandefrot Meaza Zeleke - Doctor of Philosophy
• Huei-Yi Lai - Doctor of Philosophy
• Joseph Pamata - Master of Arts, Psychology
• Ami Moller - Doctor of Philosophy