Professor Deidre Brown

I am Te Tumu (Deputy Dean) of the Faculty of Engineering and Design Te Herenga Auaha, Professor of Architecture, and Co-convenor of the Ancestral Futures Signature Research Area, at the University of Auckland. My previous leadership roles include Acting Dean, Deputy Dean, Head of the School of Architecture and Planning, and, at various times, Associate Dean in Research, Performance-Based Research Fund, Postgraduate (x2) and Equity in the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industry. Between 2022 and 2026 I was the Co-director of MĀPIHI: Māori and Pacific Housing Research Centre (a university-level research centre), which I also founded.

An academic of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu tribal descent, my research and teaching specialisms are Māori art and architectural history, Māori architectural design, housing, Indigenous knowledge and cultural property rights. I have written ten books, including the coauthored Toi Te Mana: an Indigenous history of Māori Art (Auckland University Press 2024, University of Chicago Press 2025), the multi-authored Art in Oceania: a new history (Thames and Hudson and Yale University Press 2012) and sole-authored Māori Architecture (Raupō 2009). I have curated several exhibitions in galleries around the country

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi and Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects. In 2023, I received the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal, the Institute’s highest honour, for my contribution to Māori architecture.

In 2026, I was elected to the governing Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi, and am a member of its Audit, Risk and Investment Committee and Trustee of its Endowment Fund Trust. My previous governance experience includes being a Govenor of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and membership of the governance boards of Objectspace, The Physics Room and the Christchurch Arts Centre. I have been member of the Māori Trademarks Advisory Committee of the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, since its establishment in 2003.