Otago announces 33 new professors

Thirty University of Otago academics are being promoted to the position of Professor this year, with a further three to the position of Research Professor.

Vice-Chancellor Hon Grant Robertson says he’s delighted with the calibre of the successful applicants.

“Our people are our taonga and these promotions highlight the breadth and depth of outstanding academic talent at Otago,” he says.

“As well as being a significant personal milestone in an academic’s career, these promotions reflect the meaningful contributions they’ve made to the advancement of learning and knowledge across the university community and beyond.

“I look forward to seeing their continued outstanding contributions to teaching and research, and ultimately having such a positive impact on our tauira and on society.”

Mr Roberston says he’s pleased to see all four academic divisions and all three main campuses represented in this round of professorial promotions.

Otago's promotion process involves thorough evaluation of each individual's record of contributions to research, teaching, and service to the University and community. It also involves input from international experts in evaluating the candidates' research contributions.

A further 34 academics are being promoted to Associate Professor and Research Associate Professor.

The promotions take effect from 1 February 2025.

From left: Angela Ballantyne, Azam Ali and Ben Darlow

Angela Ballantyne - Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice (UOW)

Angela is a bioethicist specialising in human research ethics and feminist bioethics. She also writes on ethical issues related to clinical practice, data sharing, and public health. A common unifying theme across her work is a focus on justice, equity, vulnerability, power, and exploitation. Angela teaches medical ethics in the medical programme at the University of Otago, Wellington. She is interested in health policy and the practical application of bioethics and has served on national expert committees for research ethics review, COVID-19 immunisation policy, the use of AI and algorithms in health, and assisted reproductive technologies. She has always been curious about the intersection of culture and bioethics and enjoys travelling and working overseas, including in the United States, Singapore, Switzerland, Australia, and England.

Azam Ali - Department of Oral Rehabilitation

Azam is an internationally recognised biomaterials scientist and expert in therapeutic biomaterials, biotechnology, biomedical engineering, and medical devices. His research has yielded over 168 peer-reviewed publications, 24 international patents, and several globally commercialised medical products. Azam serves on several national and international scientific advisory committees and editorial boards. He established and directed the University of Otago’s growing Bioengineering Academic Programme, led the Biomaterials Research in the Centre for Bioengineering and Nanomedicine, and directed a 13-member Biomaterials and Bioengineering research team. Azam’s research has been funded by MBIE, Health Research Council, and various industries.

Ben Darlow - Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice (UOW)

Ben’s passion is supporting people to participate in healthy active lives, particularly when they have back or joint pain. He achieves this through clinical practice as a musculoskeletal physiotherapy specialist, supporting the learning of medical and other health students, and collaborative interprofessional research. Ben’s research has explored how people make sense of back and joint pain, created tools to measure health knowledge and beliefs, co-designed resources that support people to recover from or live well with back and joint pain, and developed and tested new models of community-based health care. Ben partners with people who have lived experience of the conditions he researches so that their perspectives can inform all stages of research and implementation. He focuses on achieving equity in research participation and outcomes. Ben’s research directly informs his clinical practice and teaching. He led redesign of the pain learning curriculum for University of Otago medical students.

From left: Conor O'Kane, David Berg and David Ciccoricco.

Conor O’Kane - Department of Management

Conor’s research examines strategy, innovation and entrepreneurial processes. His main research programme focuses on university-industry engagement, specifically academic entrepreneurs and university technology transfer offices in the commercialisation of science. Over eight years within the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge, Conor led longitudinal research projects that have contributed important insights on the functioning of science teams, in particular how they frame research agendas and engage with stakeholders during the innovation process. Along with international colleagues, Conor has pioneered research on the competitive behaviours, role identity and knowledge transfer of publicly funded principal investigators in science. Conor has also undertaken research on firm turnaround strategies, innovation capabilities and performance, and entrepreneurial behaviours within developing economies. He has supervised several PhD and Masters students. Currently, Conor is Head of Programme for the Bachelor of Entrepreneurship and part of a research collaboration undertaking a five-year evaluation on the government’s R&D tax incentive.

David Berg - College of Education

David is an educational researcher and teacher educator at Te Kura Ākau Taitoka | College of Education. Building on over 30 years of teaching experience, including roles as a school teacher and deputy principal, David integrates practical classroom experience with research findings to explore how educational contexts influence learning and achievement, aiming to ensure success for all students. He is motivated by the belief that every learner has inherent value and the potential to succeed. His research and teaching focus on teacher self-efficacy, assessment practices, and other critical factors shaping learning, with an emphasis on developing actionable approaches and strategies to improve student outcomes and enhance teaching effectiveness. David is the Director of the Educational Assessment Research Unit, where he serves as the Academic Lead for the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, conducted in collaboration with the New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

David Ciccoricco - English and Linguistics Programme

David’s research frames narrative fiction as a vital mode of inquiry into the workings of cognition, and he draws on cognitive science and philosophy of mind to establish how fictional minds help explain actual ones. His work spans narratives across media, and his early publications helped shape the field of digital literary studies internationally. His two books have contributed to our understanding of the literary imagination in the digital age and are held in libraries worldwide. True to the spirit of Otago as a place of many firsts, David’s innovations include being the first in New Zealand to introduce a university course on “digital literature,” as well as the first in the country to hold English literature classes in networked computer labs, and the first to introduce “game studies” into New Zealand tertiary education – all nearly two decades ago. His research contribution has established Otago English and Linguistics as a national leader in digital literary studies. "

From left: Diane Ruwhiu, Dione Healey and Eileen McKinlay.

Diane Ruwhiu -Department of Management
Diane’s (Ngāpuhi) research focuses on Māori development, in particular understanding features of success for Māori in terms of economic activity, enterprise and tertiary education. Her passion for researching Māori approaches to business and organisation is evident in her teaching. She strives to expose students to different cultural views and business practices, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to better prepare them for the reality of working in a globally diverse world. In 2021, she received both the University of Otago Kaupapa Māori Teaching Excellence Award and the Ako Aotearoa National Kaupapa Māori Teaching Award for developing Māori-focused curriculum in the Otago Business School. Diane has served in leadership and governance roles including as a Commissioner with the New Zealand Productivity Commission and Deputy Director of the Ageing Well National Science Challenge. In September 2024, Diane was appointed as Dean of the Otago Graduate Research School.

Dione Healey - Department of Psychology

Dione’s research focuses on the development of self-regulation in childhood. She is a clinical psychologist, passionate about changing the developmental trajectory for children, particularly those with areas of under-developed skills. A key focus of her research is her ENGAGE (Enhancing Neurocognitive Growth with the Aid of Games and Exercises) programme which fosters the development of self-regulation skills through play. Her research has been funded by the Health Research Council, The Tindall Foundation and Ministry of Education, and is published in leading international journals. ENGAGE has led to improvements in children’s behavioural, emotional, and cognitive self-regulation abilities, that are maintained over time. She has worked together with Otago Innovation, the University’s commercialisation company, to license ENGAGE. The New Zealand Government is currently funding a roll-out of ENGAGE within Early Childhood Education (ECE) settings nationwide, with the Methodist Mission Southern holding the licence to train ECE teachers in the use of ENGAGE.

Eileen McKinlay - Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice (UOW)

Eileen is a registered nurse who researches interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) in health care delivery. Working effectively in an interprofessional health care team improves health outcomes for patients, reduces safety and risk incidents, increases staff satisfaction and may lead to a reduction in health inequity because IPCP focuses on the delivery of culturally safe, patient centred care. Eileen has investigated how IPCP is expressed in primary health care settings and how health sciences and social care students learn about IPCP through interprofessional education (IPE). IPE is inherently collaborative and Eileen has established relationships with tertiary education providers around Aotearoa NZ and is undertaking research on IPE with international collaborators. She is currently Director of the Centre for Interprofessional Education, seconded from Primary Health Care and General Practice Department at UOW.

From left: Emily Keddell, Grant Dick and Harald Schwefel.

Emily Keddell - Social and Community Work Programme

Emily’s research focuses on the intersecting social inequities affecting the child protection system. Beneath this broad umbrella, she examines disparities for specific groups, decision-making variability, knowledge interpretation in practice, and the politics of state intervention in family life. She has a particular interest in the ethical implications of algorithmic tools used in child protection decision-making. Current projects include developing strategies to prevent babies entering care at the time of birth; examining reporting decisions made by community professionals to statutory child protection; and a study of collaborative decision-making between iwi and Oranga Tamariki. Her work includes a focus on whānau and practitioner voices and experiences. She was an invited witness to the Waitangi Tribunal hearing (WAI2915) investigating inequities for Māori in the Aotearoa New Zealand child protection system, and the Royal Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. Emily is a founding member of the Reimagining Social Work blog, an associate editor of Qualitative Social Work, and an editorial collective member for the journal Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work. Her work highlights issues of rights, equity and justice within child protection systems and how to address them.

Grant Dick - School of Computing

Grant works in the areas of data science and artificial intelligence. He was the Head of the Department of Information Science from 2022-2023 and is currently the Head of School of the School of Computing. Grant’s research has primarily focused on evolutionary computation methods, a computational approach to artificial intelligence that mimics Darwinian natural selection in populations. His work within evolutionary computation places a strong emphasis on replication of studies and method critique. Grant’s research also advances the field of symbolic regression - a variant of machine learning that uses evolution to produce interpretable models by simultaneously searching for both the form of an equation and its corresponding parameters. Since 2020, Grant has been a named researcher in the MBIE-funded programme on Data Science for Aquaculture – his work in that programme aims to advance the application of machine learning and AI in monitoring fish health in farms and trials.

Harald Schwefel - Department of Physics

Harald is a physicist with teaching and research interests in nonlinear and quantum optics. He is passionate about research on resonant enhanced nonlinear interactions and his team has explored new methods of generating optical frequency combs and efficient ways of converting light between different frequencies. Harald’s undergraduate education started at the Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from Yale University, USA. After the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany he joined Otago in 2015. At Otago he is a PI at the Te Whai Ao – Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies as well as the Quantum Technology Aotearoa. His research forms the basis for entangled quantum computing and new methods of detecting and measuring climate gases from space. The impact of Harald’s work has been recognised by his election as fellow of Optica. He has led several Royal Society Catalyst, Marsden, and MBIE Endeavour grants.

From left: Heather Dyke, Helen Roberts and Janice Lord.

Heather Dyke - Philosophy Programme

Heather is a philosopher whose research focus is the philosophy of time. She is a prominent defender of the B-theory, or tenseless theory of time, according to which there is no objective present moment, no division into past, present and future, and no flow of time. Instead, time is constituted by fixed temporal relations that order times and events. Consequently, it is sometimes referred to as the ‘block universe’ view. This view aligns closely with what we learn about time from science, particularly physics. But it is more clearly at odds with our ordinary human experience of time: with temporal language, phenomenology, agency and cognition. Much of Heather’s current work is engaged in attempting to reconcile the scientific image of time with the vastly different image of time that emerges in these many different areas of our lived temporal experience. As a result, her work involves looking at how time is understood in disciplines such as language and linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and more. Heather is the incoming Head of Programme for Philosophy.

Helen Roberts - Department of Accountancy and Finance

Helen’s research investigates the intersection between firm performance, corporate social responsibility and governance. She has also examined issues related to energy finance and the impact of climate change on firm value. More recently, her research passion has shifted to include the importance of gender diversity on boards, within managerial hierarchies, investment choices, across financial planning careers and the role of gender diversity in firm governance. Current work explores how corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulations and social disclosures are affected by CSR committee composition and the impact of changes in charity financial reporting standards and the timeliness of charity information reporting. Helen is currently the Associate Dean of Research in the Otago Business School and serves on the New Zealand Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Institute board.

Janice Lord - Department of Botany

Janice is a botanist with research interests centred around the ecology and reproductive biology of the New Zealand flora – how a diversity of species, from subantarctic megaherbs and alpine plants to canopy trees, interact with mutualists such as pollinators, seed dispersers and mycorrhizal fungi. She leads an MPI/TUR 1 Billion Trees research project investigating the cost-effective establishment of native forests on retired pastoral land in southern New Zealand, with aligned research programmes on carbon sequestration by native trees and aerially dispersal of native seeds. She actively promotes nature-based solutions to climate change that incorporate vibrant native ecosystems, and regularly engages with policy makers, rural landholders and community groups. Janice also designed the greenroof for the University of Otago William Evans Building and advises on biodiversity for the University’s Sustainability Neighbourhood project. She is Director of the Otago Regional Herbarium and Co-director of He Kaupapa Hononga – Otago’s Climate Change network.

From left: Jason Gurney, John Ashton and John Dockerty.

Jason Gurney (Research Professor) - Department of Public Health (UOW)

Jason (Ngāpuhi) is an epidemiologist and the Director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) Research Group at the University of Otago, Wellington. Since joining the University in 2011, his research has focused on describing and understanding disparities in health outcomes between Māori and non-Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.  He has led multiple Health Research Council Project grants in areas including post-operative mortality, lung cancer treatment, and diabetes and cancer co-occurrence. He is now leading a five-year HRC Programme grant, which uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine cancer treatment provision for Māori across all cancers, and will project forward to inform future service provision. Jason serves on multiple national and international groups, including the Public Health Advisory Committee which provides independent public health advice to the Minister of Health. Jason is also an author, publishing his first book on rheumatic fever in 2024 (‘The Twisted Chain’, Otago University Press).

John Ashton - Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology

John has dedicated over two decades to pharmacology at Otago, mentoring the next generation of scientists. Originally trained in evolutionary biology, his career began with a focus on avian developmental adaptations, transitioning into cannabinoid research in the early 2000s. In 2013, diagnosed with cancer himself, he again transitioned, this time to researching lung cancer with a focus on understanding how combinations of targeted therapies affect cancer cell growth and viability and drug resistance, particularly in ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer. During his time at Otago, he has supervised numerous PhD and MSc students, many of whom have secured prominent positions in New Zealand and internationally. His approach emphasises intellectual curiosity, rigorous experimentation, the practical application of research for patient outcomes, and leveraging adversity into opportunity. As Chairman of the Expert Advisory Committee on Controlled Drugs for the Ministry of Health, he played a key role in the regulation of lethal synthetic cannabinoids, and as founding member of Lung Foundation New Zealand, has provided an informed voice in advocating for access to new lung cancer medicines.

John Dockerty - Department of Preventive and Social Medicine

John is an epidemiologist and public health physician who has worked in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in unravelling the causes of cancer in children. John is an active member of the Childhood Cancer and Leukemia International Consortium (CLIC). His methodological approaches have included studies of time trends and demographic differences, clustering, case-control studies and cancer survival. He has also researched the psychological, social and economic effects of childhood cancers, and has worked on systematic reviews and international pooled analyses. John is committed to excellence in study design, and the real-world application of research findings. This comes through in his teaching and supervision of students who are learning how to make their own worthwhile contributions to research in public health and medicine. John has additional research threads in Health Care Evaluation and Medical Education, with the aims of improving quality and ensuring patients’ views are heard.

From left: Karyn Paringatai, Kirsten Robertson and Liana Machado.

Karyn Paringatai - Te Tumu/School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies

Karyn (Ngāti Porou) is leading research that sits at the interface of diverse knowledge systems that are firmly grounded in te ao Māori. She has spearheaded research into Indigenous teaching methodologies which culminated in the revitalisation of a traditional Māori pedagogy labelled “teaching in the dark” for which she was awarded the 2014 Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. In 2018 Karyn was award Marsden Research Funding to investigate the impact of genetic research on whakapapa. This platform of work is underpinned by earlier research that investigated Māori urban migration and the effects on Māori identity amongst urban born Māori, including knowledge of whakapapa. Working closely with affected whānau, clinical health professionals, and geneticists, the wider team Karyn works with have spearheaded a strong platform of Māori research in this space, for which they were awarded the 2023 Prime Minister’s Science Prize. They strive to ensure their work is mokopuna focused and will continue to save lives.

Kirsten Robertson - Department of Marketing

Kirsten (Kāi Tahu) is the Head of the Department of Marketing at the Otago Business School. Kirsten’s research is interdisciplinary, drawing from psychology, public health, and marketing to address pressing societal challenges and improve well-being. Her work focuses on three key themes: controversial products (e.g., alcohol, cannabis, sugar, and over-the-counter drugs), well-being, and regulation; interpersonal partner violence; and dementia-friendly communities. At the heart of Kirsten’s research is a commitment to translating findings into impactful change. Her work has informed and shaped policy, practice, and public discourse on critical issues, including the regulation of recreational cannabis, alcohol, and therapeutic products. Kirsten has supervised 27 postgraduate students to completion and has received several university supervisor awards. She has also held key leadership roles, including Associate Dean Research (Commerce), Chair of Alzheimers Otago, and currently serves as Deputy Director of Te Maea: Māori and Indigenous Economy and Enterprise Network.

Liana Machado - Department of Psychology

Research in Liana's laboratory focuses on mechanisms and machinery underlying healthy cognitive functioning, on deficits that emerge as a result of aging and brain diseases and disorders, and on simple and accessible means to improve cognitive functioning, such as through exercise and diet. By working with people suffering from neurological conditions (such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease) or other conditions that adversely impact brain functioning (such as COVID-19 and endometriosis), as well as with healthy young and older adults, Liana’s laboratory has been able to combine the gained knowledge to advance the current understanding of brain function and dysfunction, and to identify ways to improve cognitive functioning across the lifespan and in the face of challenges. Our research is committed to finding simple accessible means to help optimise brain function and to arm people with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions that can help support better brain functioning.

From left: Lincoln Wood, Logan Walker and Maria Stubbe.

Lincoln Wood - Department of Management

Lincoln is a supply chain and operations research expert who develops cutting-edge analytical frameworks for tackling complex business challenges. Lincoln's distinctive approach combines analytics with a deep understanding of organisational dynamics. This can drive transformative change in complex systems, from enhancing construction management and optimising global supply chains to Health Research Council funded projects, such as streamlining hospital surgical scheduling and emergency department management. Lincoln is passionate about transforming organisations with data-driven analysis. He uses advanced methods to help balance delivering value, maintaining resilience, and serving communities, providing practical solutions crucial for pressured service organisations. He has mentored many postgraduate students who now hold leadership roles worldwide in academia and industry. As an Associate Editor for the leading Journal of Supply Chain Management and a Section Editor at Heliyon, he showcases his commitment to advancing analytical approaches in operational decision-making.

Logan Walker (Research Professor) - Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science (UOC)

Logan is a cancer geneticist and the current Associate Dean Research, at the University of Otago Christchurch. His research focuses on understanding the impact of genetic changes on health. After completing post-doctoral training in Australia, and returning to the University of Otago, his research programme was significantly strengthened by being awarded a Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship (HRC) followed by a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (RSNZ). He is an invited member of several international groups tasked with improving protocols for genetic testing around the world. This work includes developing RNA diagnostic guidelines for both the clinical and research setting, and providing expert advice about the implementation of these guidelines and the interpretation of genetic test results. In collaboration with multiple international consortia, he has also contributed to and led some of the largest genetic association studies to discover inherited DNA copy number changes that increase or decrease susceptibility to cancer.

Maria Stubbe - Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice (UOW)

Maria is a social scientist and applied sociolinguist who has published widely on research relating to health communication, health services, workplace language and discourse analysis. She is director of the interdisciplinary Applied Research on Communication in Health (ARCH) Group and co-leads research in the Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago Wellington. Previously she helped establish the long running NZ Language in the Workplace Project and Wellington Corpus of Spoken NZ English at Victoria University of Wellington. Recent research includes conversation analysis of real-life health interactions, exploring narratives of health and illness, and evaluating primary and community health services relating to diabetes, mental health, respiratory illness and immunisation, with a focus on intercultural care and health equity. She has led major externally funded research projects, and particularly enjoys working with postgraduate students and collaborating with other researchers, health providers and service users across Aotearoa and internationally.

From left: May Mei, Melanie Bussey and Michael Sam.

May Mei - Department of Oral Rehabilitation

May’s research focuses on two themes – the use of silver diamine fluoride in tooth decay management and developing bioactive materials for tooth decay management. The findings from her research have underpinned the clinical use of silver diamine fluoride to manage tooth decay, also providing novel strategies for tooth decay management. As a result, the Draft Global Oral Health Action Plan (2023-2030) by WHO has added silver diamine fluoride as one of the essential “curative oral health care”. May has been recognised with several prestigious honours, including the Oral Biology Award (International Association of Dental Research (IADR)-ANZ), the IADR Centennial Emerging Leaders Award, and the IADR Basil G. Bibby Young Investigator Award. She is a past president of the IADR Cariology Research Group (2023-2024), and currently serves on the Executive team of the IADR Australia New Zealand Division, as well as being a board member of the IADR Asia Pacific Region.

Melanie Bussey - School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Science

Melanie is an expert in sports biomechanics and neuromuscular function, with a particular focus on athlete welfare and women’s health. Her current research explores the intersection of wearable technology and neuromechanics to develop robust methodologies and interventions for protecting athletes in high-risk sports. As the author of the highly regarded textbook Sports Biomechanics: Reducing Injury Risk and Improving Performance, her insights have been sought by expert panels, industry professionals, and health agencies. Through partnerships with national and international sports organisations such as World Rugby and New Zealand Rugby, along with industry collaborators, she has contributed to the development of evidence-based protocols for player safety. Among these efforts is the groundbreaking ORCHID study, which sheds light on critical sex-specific and youth risks associated with head acceleration loads in community rugby. Looking ahead, Melanie is focused on advancing sex- and age-specific models for managing contact loads and enhancing head control. These models aim to provide tailored strategies that account for playing experience and neuromuscular development, further improving athlete safety and welfare across various sports and demographics.

Michael Sam - School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences

Mike’s research focuses on the policies and politics of sport. His research addresses: the dilemmas and 'wicked problems’ associated with governing the sector; and the challenges of policy regimes around match-fixing, integrity governance and stadium financing. Mike has produced comparative work on the design of sport development systems in Canada, Australia, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Chile. His advice has been sought by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Sport NZ and the former Health Promotion Agency. Drawing on his articles and books (e.g., Sport in the City [2011], Sport Policy in Small States [2016] and the Handbook of Sport Development [forthcoming], he regularly provides media commentary on issues related to stadium debates, elite sport funding and athlete welfare. Mike’s current research investigates the changing ‘compact’ between government, sport organisations and volunteers, arising from New Zealand’s newly established Sport Integrity Commission.

From left: Neil Pickering, Priscilla Wehi and Rajesh Katare.

Neil Pickering - Te Pokapū Matatika Koiora, The Bioethics Centre, DSM

Neil is a bioethicist with a primary focus on psychiatric ethics. Bioethics has a strong normative tradition of reflecting on practice. Neil’s research, though, is typically one step removed from this. He was exposed early to the work of Thomas Szasz whose objections to the abuse of psychiatric patients was underpinned by the claim that mental illness was a fabrication. But Szasz’s claim didn’t seem persuasive and working out a response to it was the substance of Neil’s PhD and first publications. Subsequent research projects have usually taken on a similar conceptual character. His current focus is on decision-making competence. Should the riskiness of a person’s choice – refusing a safe and effective treatment, for example, be taken into account when assessing their competence? In practice, psychiatrists are often called on to assess competence of patients. How they should do this is what gives rise to – and meaning to – the conceptual enquiry.

Priscilla Wehi (Research Professor) - School of Geography

Priscilla is a conservation biologist with a history of collaborative and creative research. She leads transdisciplinary research, building on her experience in Indigenous socioecological systems, ecology, conservation and animal behaviour. Priscilla’s primary research interests are ecological knowledge and socioecological relationships. She frequently works on human-nature relationships and introduced species that challenge native ecosystems, and explores the relationship between conservation biology and mātauranga Māori. Throughout her career, Priscilla has supported cultural change and inclusivity in science to create broad platforms for intellectual advancement. She is currently co-director of Te Pūnaha Matatini – the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for complex systems. As a globally active mentor with strong interests in research and work culture, she has contributed to mentoring early career researchers, development of new pathways for and expressions of scientific leadership, and work on equity issues.

Rajesh Katare - Department of Physiology

Rajesh’s research focuses on advancing the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, with a strong emphasis on translating laboratory discoveries into clinical practice. His team explores the molecular mechanisms that drive heart disease, particularly in diabetes, and have identified how molecules like microRNAs and their carriers, exosomes, contribute to heart dysfunction. By studying these processes, his team aims to uncover new ways to detect and treat heart disease. One of the key breakthroughs in Rajesh’s research career is the discovery of early molecular changes in diabetic hearts, which has profound implications for preventing and managing disease progression. These innovations have laid a strong foundation for developing innovative diagnostic tools that offer precise insights into disease mechanisms, enabling earlier and more effective interventions. The ultimate goal is to transform cardiovascular care by bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world applications, improving outcomes for patients worldwide.

From left: Steven Mills, Thomas McLean and Zach Weber.

Steven Mills - School of Computing

Steven’s primary area of research is computer vision, particularly the reconstruction of 3D scenes and models from images of the world. He is interested in the interplay between theoretical advances and practical applications, with a particular focus on projects with cultural and heritage value. This includes collaboration with Te Rūnaka o Awarua creating a virtual reconstruction of their whare tipuna for use in a virtual reality system to connect distant community members to their tūrangawaewae; 3D shape analysis applied to archaeology of traditional Māori stone tool manufacture; and developing interactive exhibits for the multi-sensory Hou Rongo exhibition to support cultural revitalisation with the Hokotehi Moriori Trust. This research is inherently interdisciplinary, involving close co-design with communities, and working as tauiwi on these projects has been both rewarding and transformative. Steven is currently Head of Programme for Computer Science in the recently formed School of Computing.

Thomas McLean - English and Linguistics Programme

Thomas’s interdisciplinary work draws on his interests in literature, history, and the history of art. His monograph, The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire, was the first extended examination of British representations of Eastern Europe. An expert on nineteenth-century manuscripts, he edited a volume of the letters of Scottish playwright Joanna Baillie. His recent work has included a Marsden-funded project on literary families, which led to a co-edited scholarly edition of Jane Porter’s bestselling novel of 1803, Thaddeus of Warsaw, along with a special issue of the journal Victorians. Thomas enjoys communicating research to popular audiences, and his publications include articles for the Los Angeles Review of Books, North & South, and New Zealand Listener. He is particularly interested in neglected and forgotten artists and authors. In 2024, he received the Frances Browne Award for an exceptional contribution to reanimating interest in Browne’s writing.

Zach Weber - Philosophy Programme

Zach works in philosophical logic. His research is about dealing with contradictions and logical paradoxes, using a type of formal logic called paraconsistent logic, which unlike other systems allows for some inconsistency without breaking down. He has written books, encyclopaedia articles, and many papers about this. Thanks to support over the years from the Australian Research Council, the Royal Society Te Apārangi, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he has been lucky to work with many excellent international collaborators, investigating paraconsistent logic in areas such as the foundations of mathematics, the problem of vagueness, and metatheory (the logic for reasoning about logic). Standard logic cannot cope with contradiction, but we have to, in order to live our lives, and that is what drives Zach’s research. He is currently working on a project applying paraconsistent logic to computability theory. Zach has served as Head of the Philosophy Programme and continues as the Secretary General of the Australasian Association of Logic.