Māmari Stephens

Ko Pukenamu te maunga, ko Wainui te awa, Ko Tinana te waka, ko Tumoana te tangata. He uri tēnei nō Te Rarawa; ko Ngāti Moetonga, ko Te Rokekā ngā hapū; ko Wainui te marae. Tēnā tātou.

Māmari has been with the Faculty of Law since January 2006 after several years studying, and working in Corrections & Māori broadcasting. From 2008 until 2015 Māmari, along with Assistant Professor Mary Boyce formerly of the University of Hawai’i, ran the Legal Māori Project. Her primary research interests are law and language, Māori and the New Zealand legal system, and social security law. She recently completed the first comprehensive text on social security law, published in 2019 by Thomson Reuters. Māmari is married to Maynard Gilgen and has two sons, Te Rangihuia, Havelund and a daughter, Jessica-Lee Ngātaiotehauauru.

Current research
Māmari is currently engaged in the following research project:

Te Rauhī i te Tikanga - A Tikanga Companion

With the help of the Borrin Foundation, Māmari is leading a team of researchers to create a digital ‘companion’, to assist those learning about law in Aotearoa New Zealand to understand how tikanga Māori operate as legal norms for Māori communities, and how those norms and their related legal practices can and do interact with the general legal system in Aotearoa New Zealand. The project has been through its pilot stage and is now in stage 1.