Christina Stringer

Associate Professor, Business School, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Christina is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management and International Business.

In 2008, she undertook a project for New Zealand’s Ministry of Fisheries (now Ministry of Primary Industries) which looked at the extent that New Zealand caught fish was being processed in China and exported to key markets. This project led in 2010, to Christina and colleagues investigating the use of forced labour on board New Zealand foreign chartered fishing vessels. This research, in turn, led to a Ministerial Inquiry, a major shift in government policy, and the enactment of a law requiring all foreign charter vessels to be reflagged to New Zealand by 1 May 2016.

In 2012, Christina and her two co-researchers (Dr Glenn Simmons and Professor Hugh Whittaker) received the Dean's Award: a special award recognising the impact of research concerned with human rights issues on-board foreign charter vessels fishing in New Zealand's waters. In 2017, the fisheries team (Dr Glenn Simmons, Professor Hugh Whittaker, Associate Professor Christina Stringer, Associate Professor Manuka Henare and Professor Nigel Haworth) received a Research Excellence Award for Strategic Impact in Research.

This research, in turn, led to research undertaken on behalf of the Human Trafficking Research Coalition (comprising Stand Against Slavery, Hagar New Zealand, Préscha Initiative, ECPAT NZ) and the release of the ‘Worker Exploitation in New Zealand: A Troubling Landscape’ report in 2016.

Most recently in 2019, Christina completed research with Professor Francis Collins (University of Waikato) into the exploitation of temporary migrant workers in New Zealand, and with Professor Snejina Michailova research into exploitation in the jurisdictions New Zealand compares itself to (Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom). This research fed into the extensive review undertaken by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), into migrant worker exploitation in New Zealand.