Travel and Learning Award for Shea Esterling
Borrin Foundation Travel and Learning Award
Shea’s plan
Shea will use her Borrin Foundation Travel and Learning Award to travel to the locations certified as International Dark Sky Places (IDSP) in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand by the non-profit organization DarkSky International for a period of six weeks in total between April and November 2025. The IDSP program certifies communities, parks, and protected areas around the world that preserve and protect dark sites through responsible lighting policies and public education. During these visits, she will conduct interviews with stakeholders to determine if certification as an IDSP has secured the benefits that DarkSky International articulates. The aim of these visits is to understand the issues surrounding the regulation of darks skies (i.e. how dark skies may be appropriately used for scientific and commercial purposes) and the promotion and protection of indigenous knowledges, particularly the knowledges of indigenous women. Her project will evaluate what has worked well and what could be improved upon in relation to the promotion and protection of dark skies and indigenous rights in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Ultimately, these observations on successes and challenges will inform her development of legislation for the governance of dark skies that incorporates mātauranga Māori (Māori Indigenous knowledge) in Aotearoa New Zealand.
About Shea
Shea Esterling is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in the Faculty of Law at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds a JD from Indiana University Mauer School of Law. She completed her MA (Distinction, International Law) at King’s College London and her MScEcon (Merit, International Politics) and PhD at Aberystwyth University. Her research is at the intersection of human rights and heritage law with focus on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2018, Shea was selected by the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) as the Early Career Research to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at the International Four Societies Conference. She is the most recent outgoing Co-Chair for the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Rights of Indigenous Peoples Interest Group (2021-24) and the current Chair of the ASIL Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group (2024-27). In 2022, Shea was awarded a Canterbury Fellowship at Oxford. With this fellowship, she spent three months as a Research Visitor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. While in residence, she completed her first manuscript, Indigenous Cultural Property and International Law: Restitution, Rights and Wrongs (Oxon: Routledge 2024).
Grant Amount
$10,000 in 2025 to support travel
“The opportunity to visit International Dark Sky Places at this early stage in my career is invaluable. It will allow me to distil best practice surrounding the promotion and protection of dark skies while building lasting relationships with Indigenous Peoples both in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia as part of working to ensure that marginalized voices are heard and that mātauranga Māori is included in the governance of dark skies.”