HARKNESS
FELLOWSHIPS TRUST
NZ Harkness Fellowships to resume in 2023 in partnership with the Public Service Commission
After a three-year hiatus created by the Covid-19 pandemic, the New Zealand Harkness Fellowships will resume in 2023, with a refreshed focus on creating career-enhancing opportunities for emerging public sector leaders.
Applications will be advertised before Christmas, with applications due in the first quarter of 2023, allowing Fellows to travel from the middle of next year.
Key to the resumption of the Fellowships is a renewed partnership that the NZ Harkness Fellowships Trust Board has entered into with the Public Service Commission.
“While it has been frustrating being unable to run the Fellowship programme since 2019, it has given the board an opportunity to pursue the sustainable, long-term future of the NZ Harkness Fellowships,” says Harkness Fellowships Trust chair and past Fellow in 1997-98, Patrick Smellie.
A renewed focus on emerging leaders
The creation of a new relationship with the PSC, under the auspices of its Leadership Development Centre, will allow up to two Fellows annually to undertake exchanges in the United States and for the Fellowship programme to be further developed.
“Since they were first offered to New Zealand recipients in the 1950s, the Harkness Fellowships have been a prestigious award, offering life-changing opportunities and career development, mostly but not always to emerging public sector leaders,” says Smellie.
Administered by the Commonwealth Fund of New York, the Fellowships changed to focus on public health policy in the late 1990s, with a new NZ Harkness Fellowship established and administered separately, more akin to the traditional multi-disciplinary Fellowship.
A premier opportunity
A major grant in 2014, facilitated by the then Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, secured the medium-term future of a shortened three-month Fellowship programme for two Fellows annually.
“Deepening our existing relationship with the Public Service Commission is a natural next step in securing the future of the Fellowships,” says Smellie.
The Public Service Commissioner, Peter Hughes, says his own experience as a Harkness Fellow had been transformative.
“Our vision is to make the NZ Harkness Fellowship one of the premier opportunities for emerging public service leaders in years to come,” he says.
How to apply
Details of the application and selection process will be announced in late November, with applications and selections in the first quarter of next year.In the meantime, potential applicants wishing to be kept informed of the process can register their interest by sharing their contact details via this form. You can also join our LinkedIn group for news and updates.
Harkness Fellows – insights from the USA
A report-back session live via Zoom
The Harkness Fellowships Trust and Fulbright New Zealand invite you to tune in for a Zoom webstream featuring insightful presentations from our three most recent Fellows, who spent time in the US, pre Covid-19, researching some of the biggest issues facing society.
In this report back session you’ll find out about the research our Fellows undertook in the US and how the insights they gained could inform policy and practice here in New Zealand.
Where: Via this Zoom link
When:Thursday 18 June at 4pm – 5.15pmWhat: Three brief video presentations followed by Q&A.
This Harkness report back session features…
Joe Beaglehole Senior Analyst at the Ministry for the Environment, spent three months at the Marron Institute at New York University researching tools and institutions to better accommodate rapid urban growth. He’ll discuss the insights he gained into land use regulation and urban policy and what they mean for New Zealand.
Donna Provoost, Director – Strategy, Rights & Advice at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, was hosted by the Harvard University (Center for the Developing Child) and the University of Oregon (Center for Translational Neuroscience). She explored approaches to improving child wellbeing, particularly related to their sense of belonging, identity and agency. and met with over 150 people in university and research organisations, NGO think tanks and service providers, community leaders, and yes, even young people.
Doug Jones, former Manahautū (General Manager Māori) at the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and current Chief Executive of Ngāi Tāmanuhiri Iwi, was based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring the environmental trade-offs, and costs that need to be considered when introducing new technologies (such as gene editing) to protect native species. He’ll outline lessons from the US experience for New Zealand’s own approach to emerging technologies.
Remembering Royce Elliott
Royce Elliott, a 1968 Harkness fellow, died 0n 19 September 2019.
Royce was a veterinary scientist who had a distinguished career in the Ministry of Agriculture. He was a visionary leader who transformed the state veterinary service, modernised the regulation of dairy processing and integrated the Ministry’s food safety and agricultural biosecurity systems.
He held a series of senior management positions including eight years as Assistant Director-General of Agriculture. In 1990, he was appointed Group Director, Policy and retired in 1993 as Deputy Director- General MAF.
Following retirement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Royce became Executive Director of the Institute of Public Administration NZ (IPANZ) for several years in the mid to late 1990s.
He is well known in the New Zealand Harkness family because he was the Harkness Fellowships representative of the Commonwealth Fund of New York for New Zealand from 1984 to 1992. He chaired the selection panels for those years.
In 2015 , Royce published “The Glass Jar” about his childhood in an orphanage. He was a devoted family man and a kind and generous manager with the highest ethical standards.
He was qualified as BVSc (Hons), MRCVS, DIP BACT (MANCH) and was awarded an OBE and the NZ 1990 Medal. He was a Harkness Fellow from 1968-70 at the Trudeau Medical Research Institute in New York.
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