SGEES Pofessor awarded the 2015 New Zealand Geographical Society’s President’s Award for Graduate Supervision
The citation from President Dr Ann Pomeroy reads as follows: Warwick Murray deserves this award in order to highlight the contribution he has made since his arrival in New Zealand in 2001 to geographically-focussed graduate studies in, of and with Latin America.
The citation from President Dr Ann Pomeroy reads as follows:
Warwick Murray deserves this award in order to highlight the contribution he has made since his arrival in New Zealand in 2001 to geographically-focussed graduate studies in, of and with Latin America. As Founding Director of Victoria Institute for Links with Latin America he has played an important role in developing new relationships with Uni-versities that have facilitated field work and exchange at the graduate student level in a range of countries including Chile, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil and Cuba.
His own personal research, which includes over 60 articles or chapters on the geogra-phy of the continent has helped build these bridges. His intimate working knowledge of the cultures of Latin America has seen him uniquely placed to foster graduate studies in and of the region. The quality of his supervision is very well regarded among stu-dents, as is evidenced by the testimony from one of his PhD students Edward Challies attached to this proposal. He has also played a much broader pastoral role with Latin American postgraduates both within and outside the department, organising conferences, meetings and networks across the disciplines and the country through VILLA, as well as in his role as Chair of Australasian Iberian and Latin American Studies Association.
Since arriving at Victoria in 2001 in terms of Latin American geographies he has super-vised two PhD students, 16 Masters and two honours students to completion in Latin American topics. He has gone on to publish with a significant proportion of those stu-dents, adding to our knowledge of Latin American geographies. Reaching the milestone of twenty successful graduate supervisions in Latin American topics should be noted by an award and as far as I am aware represents the single largest contribution in this re-gard in any field in New Zealand academia. This has contributed significantly to our development expertise of the area and – given that many of the students have gone on to work in government and NGOs – our relations with the region which are increasingly im-portant. Based in part on this, Victoria is now arguably the hub for Latin American work in Australia and New Zealand.