Distinguished New Zealand Geography Award: Professor Ray Watters

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Jane Jacobs Award:Dr Kevin Glynn

Dr Kevin Glynn, of the School of Humanities,University of Canterbury, has won the JaneJacobs Urban Communication Award for hispaper ‘Contested land and mediascapes: Thevisuality of the postcolonial city’. It waspublished in the special issue of the NewZealand Geographer, 65 (1), April 2009,‘Countercartographies: New (Zealand) Cul-tural Studies/Geographies and the City’,which he co-edited with Dr Julie Cupples.

The award, given by the New York-basedUrban Communication Foundation, in affilia-tion with the U.S. National CommunicationAssociation, recognises ‘an outstanding bookand/or journal article that exhibits excellence inaddressing issues of urban communication’. Itcomes with a cash prize and a glass plaque. Thepaper discusses various communication pro-cesses, including both old media and digitalmedia, such as YouTube, that establish mean-ings surrounding tbe city and establish placeidentities.nzg_1175 85..88

It seeks to explore questions such as, ‘Whatrole do discourses and images of Christchurchthat we circulate in the media play in our imagi-nation and enactment of the city as a place?How do the urban landscapes that we createcirculate meanings that go into the productionof a sense of the city’s, and therefore our ownidentities? Which social groups may bedisadvantaged or marginalised through theseprocesses? And in what ways might theynevertheless make their presence felt, andcirculate different place meanings around theimages of the city?’

The Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Pub-lication Award is named for the late socialactivist and author of The Death and Life ofGreat American Cities (1961).

Maria De CortUniversity of Canterbury

Society Awards 2009

Two geographers received the DistinguishedNew Zealand Geographer Medal at the NewZealand Geographical Society’s 2009 AGM inOld Government House, Auckland. Extractsfrom the citations for the awards to ProfessorRichard Le Heron and Professor Ray Wattersfollow. Four geographers were presented withthe President’s awards, two of these receivingDistinguished Service Awards: Mrs June Logieand Dr Paul Sirota.

June Logie has been Executive Manager andVice President of the Society since 2004, havingpreviously participated in Auckland Branchactivities for many years while a teacher atAuckland Girls Grammar, and served asAuckland Branch representative on the Boardof Geography Teachers on a number of occa-sions. In 2003, following retirement from teach-ing, she underpinned the organisation of thenational conference at Auckland. Her back-ground of experience in the wider geographicalcommunity has ensured that the Society’s HeadOffice functions and related services havebeen capable, firm and re-assuring hands. As

Dr Kevin Glynn, holding his Jane Jacobs Communi-cation Award

New Zealand Geographer (2010) 66, 85–88

© 2010 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2010 The New Zealand Geographical Society

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-7939.2010.01175.x

Executive Manager, she has played a pivotalrole in the life of the Society. Charting herservice contributions is to chart the Society’sactivities and its development during probablythe most challenging and demanding condi-tions in its history.

Paul Sirota received the DistinguishedService Award, particularly for his contribu-tions through the Otago Branch of the Society.As first student president of the Branch, he leda revitalisation of local geographical activities,and the award also recognises his outreachactivities to secondary schools, conferenceorganisation and professional developmentfor teachers.

The President’s Award for Excellence inGraduate Supervision in Geography waspresented to Professor Harvey Perkins,Lincoln University, an outstanding researcher,writer and supervisor, and a skilled and pas-sionate communicator of human geographyperspectives. He is a sought-after supervisorwith a talent for advocating the contribution ofgeography in multidisciplinary contexts and hasan acknowledged reputation for deepening theresearch experience of postgraduates.

Professor Chris Kissling, Lincoln University,received President’s Award for Excellence inTeaching in Geography. He has had a longand distinguished career teaching geographyat the University of Canterbury, the AustralianNational University and at Lincoln, in whichhe has combined geographic and alliedtheoretical knowledge with industry aware-ness in the teaching of transport managementand logistics. His former students testify tohis innovative, passionate and supportiveteaching.

Eric PawsonDepartment of Geography

University of Canterbury

Distinguished New ZealandGeographer Award: Professor

Richard Le Heron

In a 40-year geographical career, Professor LeHeron has made multiple influential contribu-tions to discipline, academy and community. Hehas received many awards, including Fulbright

and Claude McCarthy Fellowships, twoMarsden Grants and a Leverhulme VisitingProfessorship. He is a fellow of the RoyalSociety of New Zealand, and in 2003 was madean Honorary Life Member of the New ZealandGeographical Society. He is a leader in NewZealand social science, an internationallyprominent scholar in rural and economic geog-raphy, a widely respected teacher and a dedi-cated servant of domestic and internationaldisciplinary bodies.

Since the early 1980s, he has developed adistinctive theoretical and analytical approachto the study of agriculture and food. His 1993book Globalised Agriculture set a benchmarkfor work in the international literature on theinteractions between farmers, processors andrestructuring agro-commodity chains. It alsosignalled his emerging prominence as a theoristof globalisation in geography. His more recentwork on political projects and new forms ofgoverning through benchmarking and audit hasintroduced post-structural critiques into eco-nomic geography and rural studies. He servedfirst as Vice-Chair of the International Geo-graphical Union’s Commission on ‘TheDynamics of Economic Space’, and then as itsChair from 2004 to 2008.

Richard is a stalwart of the New ZealandGeographical Society. As co-editor of theSociety’s two Changing Places volume in the1990s, Richard led arguably the most influen-tial project to emerge from academic geogra-phy in New Zealand in the last 25 years. Hewas Assistant Editor, then Editor of the New

Professor Richard Le Heron

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Zealand Geographer between 1991 and 1997,and since that year has served on the nationalexecutive, since 2000 as the Society’s NationalSecretary.

Richard has served academic geography withdistinction, first at Massey University and thenat The University of Auckland where heheaded the Department of Geography from1998 to 2001. He has supervised more than 85Masters and PhD students, receiving a univer-sity award for Teaching Excellence in ResearchSupervision in 2005. Many of his recent publi-cations are co-authored, attesting to his com-mitment to collegiality and to mentoring juniorcolleagues. His current work involves applyinghis post-structural political economy lens tonature–society relations and questions of urbangovernance in an effort to equip geographers toplay prominent roles in emerging fields ofdecision making.

In each of these many ways, Richard hasbecome a tireless, imaginative and effectivesupporter of geography driven by a belief in itspotential to contribute to better future at allscales, and by intellectual and political commit-ments to the notion that the world gets made byhow we know it and how we act upon thoseunderstandings.

Nicolas LewisSchool of Environment

The University of Auckland

Distinguished New ZealandGeography Award: Professor

Ray Watters

Ray Watters has made a lasting and immensecontribution to geography in New Zealand, inresearch, teaching and communication of sig-nificant development issues relating to thePacific, Latin America, as well as New Zealand.After attaining a BA and MA (Hons) fromAuckland and Victoria Colleges, he completeda PhD at the London School of Economics in1956 for a thesis on the historical geography ofSamoa. He taught at Victoria University ofWellington for 38 years, giving courses on LatinAmerica, Historical Geography, the Pacific andChinese Peasantry. His teaching style will beremembered as forceful, sometimes idiosyn-

cratic but always passionate, especially whereissues of poverty, development and justice wereconcerned.

As a researcher, Ray was one of the pioneers(along with Buchanan, Harvey Franklin andTerry McGee) of the so-called ‘Victoria Schoolof Geography’ with its (then new) emphasis ondevelopment, culture, colonialism and politicaleconomy. This perspective was best articulatedin the pages of the Victoria Journal PacificViewpoint (now Asia Pacific Viewpoint), whichhe edited for about 20 years. A full account ofhis research can be found in P. Morrison andJ. McKinnon (1995) ‘The challenge of socialchange: The work of Ray Watters’ PacificViewpoint 36(1): 39–56.

Ray is a renowned field-based researcher. Heled research projects on the Solomon Islands,resulting in three PhDs; the Gilbert and ElliceIslands project, yielding six major reports andfive PhDs; the Ministry of Foreign Affairsproject on Small Island States (with GeoffBertram), out of which came the famousMIRAB model. The original academic paperon the MIRAB model has had more citationsthan any other single paper in the history of

Professor Ray Watters

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Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and those central ideasstill being vigorously debated today. In othersignificant projects, Ray worked in Peru,Venezuela, Fiji and China.

This immense field work achievement wastranslated into eight books, 42 scholarly papers,over 10 project reports and 5 monographs.Ray’s latest book, Journeys Towards Progress:Essays of a Geographer on Development andChange in Oceania (VUW Press 2009) is testi-mony to his commitment to scholarship. It is

the longevity of his research, as well as theoriginality and volume of Ray Watter’s contri-bution to geography, that makes him a worthyrecipient of the prestigious Distinguished NewZealand Geographer Medal.

Philip Morrison andMichael Crozier

School of Geography,Environment and Earth SciencesVictoria University of Wellington

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Distinguished New Zealand Geography Award: Professor Ray Watters