Professor Richard Shaw – Small stories of colonisation: An uncomfortable settler family history
Writer and academic Richard Shaw has written three books exploring historical amnesia and Pākehā myth-making amongst settler families in Aotearoa New Zealand: The Forgotten Coast (2021, MUP), The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation (2024, MUP), which was a finalist in the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and The Good Settler: Essays from other people’s lands (2026, MUP). He is also a professor of politics at Massey University, where he teaches courses in politics in Aotearoa New Zealand and researches the roles of political advisers in government ministers’ offices. His academic work has been published in leading international journals, and his publications include the Historical Dictionary of New Zealand (with Janine Hayward, Lara Greaves and Claire Timperley), The Edward Elgar Handbook on Ministerial and Political Advisers (2023) and Core Executives in a Comparative Context (2022).