15 July 2021

In mid-July, we joined with our fellow CAPEs in sponsoring tertiary students from the University of Auckland, the University of Waikato, Massey University, Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Canterbury and the University of Otago to attend the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs’ flagship conference, Standing in the Future: New Zealand and the Indo Pacific Region. Bringing these students together gave them the opportunity to meet with experts from government agencies and academia and build relationships with like-minded peers.

The day before the conference, too, each CAPE ran sessions with their students that focused on their specific region. Our 15 LatAm CAPE students heard about the Indo-Pacific’s relevance to Latin America from Professor David Capie and Emeritus Professor Rob Rabel he Centre for Strategic Studies at Wellington. One of the students, Canterbury’s Beatrice Holman, described the whole experience in these words: “I walked away with a notepad and brain full of thoughts and ideas – my hope is that I can incorporate these (and how NZ could do more with Latin America) into my dissertation to advance the conversations that were had. I also loved meeting some new and like-minded friends through LatAm CAPE, at the beginning they said we were now a part of their whānau and it couldn’t be more true!”