Kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) is Aotearoa New Zealand's native pigeon. It is also known as the kūkū or kūkupa in Northland. Kererū is a large bird with iridescent green and bronze feathers on its head and a white vest. 

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Kererū are known for eating large native fruits and then indelicately but memorably dispersing the seed. They're beautiful but slightly clumsy flyers with more of a thud and clap than graceful glide. And, beyond this, they're well known for getting a bit tipsy on fermented fruit. 

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The kererū, then, are an apt metaphor for a work‑in‑progress group: it takes in ideas whole, digesting them slowly before releasing them back into the world as seeds for further growth.

 

Just as its flight, though striking, is often heavy and a little ungainly, so too are arguments in their early stages, still rough, overburdened, and not yet streamlined.

 

And, finally, just as the kererū is said to become occasionally disoriented after feeding, so too does a good workshop invite a degree of intellectual imbalance, where tentative, exploratory, and even slightly unsteady thinking is essential.​

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Members of the Philosophy Programmes at the University of Waikato and University of Auckland started the group conceived of Kererū as a philosophy working group, but anyone who would like to share their work-in-progress is welcome.​​

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Our first meeting is Monday, 31 August 2026 beginning at 10:00am. For more details, please email ...