Amanda Black (soil chemist)

Amanda Black is a New Zealand soil chemist who as of 2023 is a full professor at Lincoln University, specialising in soil health and biosecurity. She has worked on kauri dieback and integration of matauranga Māori into science.

Early life and education
Black is of Tūhoe, Whakatōhea and Te Whanau a Āpanui descent. After a master's degree at the University of Otago, Black completed a PhD titled Bioavailability of cadmium, copper, nickel and zinc in soils treated with biosolids and metal salts at Lincoln University in 2010. Her work was supervised by Ron McLaren, Suzie Reichman, Tom Speir and Leo Condron.

Academic career
Black joined the staff at the university, rising to full professor in 2022. She was appointed co-director of the Bioprotection Aotearoa Centre of Research Excellence when it was refunded in 2020.

Honours and awards
Black received a Māori Television Matariki Award, the Te Tupu-ā-Rangi for Health and Science in 2019. She also received the Ministry for Primary Industries Biosecurity Award for an Emerging Leader in 2018. In 2021 Black was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship for the project Genomes to giants: restoring resilient soil ecosystems in kauri forests. This project aimed "to reconstruct the kauri soil ecosystem using soil DNA and integrat[e] matauranga Māori of the ngāhere forest, to build whakapapa of the soil."