ABSTRACT. There are significant challenges that face Maori students and supervisors as a “doctoral team.” Perhaps the most fundamental of these is that there is a metaphysics at work in writing and talking that Maori are encouraged to speculate on and reclaim. One term for this metaphysics, “Papatuanuku” (often abbreviated to “Papa”), signifies an active entity that rejects strict definition but influences both doctoral text and team. This article proposes that student and supervisor must simultaneously glance towards the conventions of academic writing and recollect Papatuanuku as potential being in the doctoral process. pp. 43–55

Keywords: Kaupapa; Papatuanuku; doctoral research; Maori; metaphysics