Our Team.
Leadership Team
Operations Team
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Co-director, Researcher and Facilitator
Dr. Dara Dimitrov PhD
Ngati Awa, Ngati Raukawa
BMS(Hons), LLB, MMS, PhD, Masters in Beekeeping (Cornell University)
Dara Dimitrov has a long career as a teacher, researcher and advocates for Māori and Pacific Indigenous Peoples. She has spent the last 10 years researching and teaching students about the law, accounting, and business. The law is complex, so Dara wants to make it accessible, practical, and intellectually stimulating for her students. Working as an academic in law at the University of Waikato, Dara’s research interests include the legal aspects of beekeeping practices, intellectual property, employment law, public law, commercial business law and the Māori intellectual property interests in manuka and manuka honey.
Dara supervises undergraduate and postgraduate students, focusing on supporting Māori and Pacific indigenous students. One [1] Pacific MBA student has completed (2022), and one is a current Māori MBA student (2023). Dara has co-edited a book and written law and accounting articles in her areas of expertise. Dara is currently editing and contributing to an indigenous book on the issues of Intellectual property for Māori and the Pacific peoples.
Dara also teaches beekeeping to both hobbyists and commercial beekeepers through industry training organizations and the Te Pukenga New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology. Dara advocates for Māori, mentoring Māori students and Māori prisoners across practical beekeeping platforms. Dara is the current Māori consultant on the Apiculture Unification Committee for Te Pukenga.
Co-director, Researcher and Facilitator
Dr Rogena Sterling PhD
Pākehā of Kōtirana (Scottish) descent
PhD, LLM (hons), LLB, BA, Cert TESOL
Dr. Rogena Sterling was the first open Intersex person to get a PhD in New Zealand. They are a legal and multidisciplinary scholar. Graduating from Te Piringa Faculty of Law at the University of Waikato with the thesis "Identity and its protection as the aim and purpose of international human rights law: The case of (inter)sex identity and its protection."
Their research interests include human rights, health/well-being, education, data rights and privacy, (inter)sex and sexuality and personhood, customary lore. They are widely published and presented at numerous international conferences.
They have a keen interest is ensuring that society is equitable and accessible for all. Their current work enhances marginalised communities including Indigenous peoples and intersex people. They have been part of key work in moving forward Indigenous data sovereignty and the CARE principles (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics).
They have taught in various courses in law (including administrative law, jurisprudence, urban planning law and governance) and social policy. They have also taught English as a second language for many years and managed a language school.
They are a research officer at Te Kotahi Research Institute, deputy chairperson of Intersex Aotearoa and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. They have been on human rights and intersex advisory panels and bodies in New Zealand. They are also regularly invited onto a number of governmental advisory panels.
Researcher and Facilitator
Dr. Hilary Davis PhD
Dr. Hilary Davis is Senior Research Fellow, at Swinburne University of Technology and stream leader for Place-based approaches. Born and raised in New Zealand, she completed her BA (hons) in Sociology at Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) and her PhD at Sheffield University in the UK. She now lives and works in Australia, but travels to NZ annually.
A social scientist with an HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) background, she has a specific interest in the role of technologies in solving wicked social problems. Hilary has a significant track-record of research on the social aspects of digital health to improve health experiences and health services, and skills in developing digital health interventions. She has a strong focus on research for social impact, particularly for people from diverse backgrounds. Hilary Davis co-edited a special issue on Digital Participation for Marginalised and Diverse Communities in the Journal of Community Informatics.
Hilary has a significant interest in mental ill-health research. She is a member of the e-EMBED team, seeking to use technology to support home-based elders with depression. She has evaluated Community Mental Health Australia's ACDC - Assisting Communities with Direct Connection, door-knocking program, which seeks to support community members access mental health services in 22 communities, nationwide. She co-led the COVID-19 HRAR Evaluation and Program Development, with Connect Health, Star Health, Peninsula Health, Merri Health and Bendigo Community Health Services. She has led mental health evaluations seeking to provide rural preventive mental health services. These include the Rural Outreach Workers (ROW) project funded by a Primary Care Partnership, and HALT (Help and Assistance Local Tradies) funded by Department of Health. She co-led an ARC discovery project ‘Optimising the roles of online communities in rural resilience’. With colleagues, she has used digital story-making for connecting older people with their communities (60+ Online project), and as a mechanism for addressing elder abuse within diverse community groups (The Free from Violence Research Project).