Te Rau Herenga o Aotearoa LIANZA 2025 Conference will be every bit as amazing as LIANZA 2023.
LIANZA 2025 Keynote Speakers
Dr Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki and Ngāti Kahungunu) ONZM
Dr Monty Soutar has been a teacher, a soldier, and a historian and has worked for the government, museums and iwi runanga. Dr Soutar’s research background spans almost forty years, during which time he has had access to closely guarded tribal and family manuscripts. In 2015, he was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and historical research. He continues to serve on the Waitangi Tribunal.
Dr Soutar is the author of Whītiki Whiti Whiti E! Māori in the First World War and Ngā Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship: C Company 28 (Māori Battalion 1939–1945). Whītiki is a significant publication about Māori participation in the First World War, and the award-winning Nga Tama Toa focussed on Māori participation in the Second World War.
In 2021, he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship to write the Kāwai series. He has published two books in the series. For Such a Time as This was published in September 2022, and Tree of Nourishment was released at the end of 2024. Both novels went straight to number one on the New Zealand Fiction bestsellers list.
Nicole Skews-Poole
Nicole Skews-Poole is a communicator and trainer specialising in understanding disinformation and building organisational resilience to online targeting.
She has a background in strategic communications, crisis response and social media. After helping steer some of the first disinformation targeting of the public sector during COVID-19, she worked as the Director of Communications for the research group The Disinformation Project. Following the Project's closure, she founded the small social enterprise called Anchordown, where she provides education, training and consulting on countering disinformation and its impacts.
Nicole is part of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network (CCAN), a registered member of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) and the Facilitators Network NZ.
Key dates
- Call for proposals open February 24
- Call for reviewers February 24
- Proposal webinar March 17
- Call for proposals close April 11
- Reviewer deadline May 20
- Early bird registration opens May 18
- Notification of acceptance of proposals by June 9
- Presenters confirm participation and register by June 28
- Early bird registration closes July 25