Indigenous Affiliation: Ngāti Raukawa, Marutūahu, Ngā Puhi
Director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Professor of Indigenous Development in the Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland.

Professor Royal is a musician and researcher with interests in the creative potential of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), particularly as this relates to the whare tapere (traditional houses of performing arts), the whare wānanga (traditional institutions of higher learning) and indigeneity. Charles has been Director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga since late 2009. He is also Professor of Indigenous Development in the Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland.
Charles is a former Director of Graduate Studies and Research at Te Wānanga o-Raukawa, Ōtaki, where he was also Kaihautū (convenor) of a graduate programme in mātauranga Māori and conducted research into theories of knowledge and worldview. As a New Zealand Senior Fulbright Scholar and a Winston Churchill Fellow in 2001, Charles conducted research into indigenous worldviews in the United States and Canada. In 2004 he took up a research residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Centre in Bellagio in Italy. In 2011 Charles was a visiting scholar at the University of London. Charles has written or edited six books on aspects of mātauranga Māori and iwi history, the most recent being Te Ngākau: He Wānanga i te Mātauranga (MKTA 2009), a text in Māori about knowledge.