Professor Jacob Edmond’s research looks at the global trends and linguistic and cultural differences that shape our contemporary world.
Professor Jacob Edmond has been appointed as the Donald Collie Chair in the English and Linguistics programme at Otago.
The Chair in English (originally shared with Classics) was one of four established when the University was founded. It was renamed after Donald Collie when his son made a generous bequest in the 1960s. Collie was a migrant from Rothiemurchus, Inverness-shire, Scotland. He farmed in Fairfax, Murihiku Southland, between 1867 and 1892 before retiring to Ōtepoti Dunedin.
Jacob says, “The Donald Collie Chair underscores our connection to the past, the support of our local community, and our responsibilities to the future.”
Jacob arrived at Otago as an assistant lecturer in 2004 and will reach 20 years of service this July. He is the longest-serving professor in the programme, having been promoted to full professor in 2020. His appointment as Chair was made by the University’s Acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Helen Nicholson, and Pro-Vice Chancellor Te Kete Aronui Division of Humanities, Professor Jessica Palmer.
Jacob’s research addresses literary and artistic responses to shifts in media, culture, economics, and geopolitics.
His first book, A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature (Fordham University Press), examines how poets from China, Russia, and the United States responded to the upheavals wrought by the end of the Cold War. In his second book, Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media (Columbia University Press), he explores the art of copying and repetition as a widespread cultural response to new media and globalisation.
“I am currently completing a book on literary and artistic engagements with the news—from the many columned newspaper to the endless scrolling of social media. By studying these engagements, the book illuminates the role of news media in shaping modern understandings of the world,” Jacob says.
Jacob teaches across a range of English papers, at all levels, as well as supervising several PhD students.
“As a programme, we continue to extend our teaching and research to serve today’s and tomorrow’s generations of passionate and diverse readers, writers, and thinkers. We are united in the belief that the science and art of language remain critically important to the university, to our community, and to the world at large.”
The first appointment to the Donald Collie Chair was Alan Horsman (1968–1984), then Colin Gibson (1984–1999), Evelyn Tribble (2003–2018), and most recently Associate Professor Shef Rogers (2023-2024).