Fulbright–Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Graduate Award

Before you apply

One award a year and it is one of the largest available to a Māori graduate student anywhere. Up to US$50,000, plus NZ$4,000 of travel funding, for up to a full year of study or research in the United States.

Grantees have gone to the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Duluth and Baltimore, working alongside Indigenous scholars and communities. Recipients have researched Native American and Native Hawai'ian traditional clothing making as decolonising practice, and the lived experiences of the Indigenous diaspora.

Unlike the Scholar Award, you do not need a PhD or an existing NPM affiliation. That award is for senior researchers already inside the network. This one is for a graduate student, which is a very different door.

Your proposal has to sit within the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga research programme, so read their Matakitenga research framework before writing anything.

Confirmed 16 September 2026: the graduate round runs on its own timetable, opening 15 July and closing 1 August each year — earlier in the year than the Scholar Award's 1 October deadline, and already closed for 2026. Diarise it for mid-July next year rather than discovering it in September.

Fulbright ask that you speak to them about whether a project is appropriate before approaching Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, and they say the application takes time. Start months out, not weeks.