Help Daniel complete his PhD

Talofa, nga mihi mahana kia koutou.

My name is Daniel Satele. I’m a mixed-race Samoan writer, singer and weaver from West Auckland. I’m also an almost-finished PhD student in English (literature) at the University of Auckland.

When I graduate, I will be one of only a handful of indigenous Pacific people to have ever received a PhD in English from the University of Auckland.

Donors will be thanked in the “Acknowledgements” section of my thesis, which will be held (both physically and digitally) at the University of Auckland library indefinitely. [Please contact danielmichael.satele@gmail.com with your receipt to confirm spelling of your name etc., especially as you may not wish to have your name displayed on here].

I have been living without regular income since 2015, going for long stretches of time without any income at all. So any amount you donate will make a real difference in my life and I know how to stretch it.

Along with the abstract “cost” of spending full time hours on an unpaid project over years, direct costs of completing my PhD have included buying things like stationery and specialised books and maintaining a computer.

Your donation will help me recoup and recuperate (financially – but in turn, physically, mentally, spiritually etc.) from this massive project.

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More about my PhD journey including the financial side of it…

Completing this degree has taken me just over 8 years. I made the initial submission of my thesis in October 2019. I passed the oral exam in March 2020. I will now submit the final revised version of my thesis at the end of this month (September 2020).

Due to a bureaucratic loophole, I lost access to over $10,000 in governmental financial assistance that I would have received under normal circumstances. Between December 5th 2017 and May 14th 2018, and then again from 25th March 2019 to now, this project has been completed on no income whatsoever besides the charity of my parents.

To be clear: I won a full scholarship covering 3 out of those 8 years. It ended in 2015.

I am in no way saying that my own innate limitations or failings as an individual did not play a role in my inability to complete the degree within the time-frame of the scholarship. I, however, believe that completing the degree is still of value, not only to myself but to the wider community, even if it has taken a little longer.

In saying that, family issues, my physical health (high blood pressure and pre-diabetes) and my mental health were also real factors in the degree taking longer.

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More about the thesis itself…

My thesis combines Lacanian psychoanalytic understandings with medical history and the close reading of literary and popular texts to trace the role of blood in vampire fiction from the eighteenth century through to the twenty-first.

My thesis was examined by two prominent experts in Gothic literary studies from the U.K. and was very positively received.

Photo: Me graduating with my Master of Arts in English (with First Class Honours) in 2011.