The latest promotion round has seen 20 Massey University staff promoted to Professor and 37 to Associate Professor. The promotions take effect from 1 January 2022.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas has applauded their achievement and acknowledged the hard work they have dedicated to their career and university.
“The promotions highlight the amazing work of each individual. The volume of promotions is a small indication of how much diversity in talent we have across each of our campuses. I look forward to seeing their future research, teaching, and achievements at Massey University."
Massey's newest Professors
Professor Biggs, Brown and Castro.
Professor Patrick Biggs – College of Sciences
Genetics and genomics have been at the heart of Professor Biggs’ research since his PhD in the United Kingdom. On his arrival at Massey University in 2007, he has been central to the development of high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and applications at Massey and was involved in government funded entities to establish HTS within New Zealand. He has used such techniques in his own research on bacterial pathogens focusing on gastrointestinal pathogens such as Campylobacter, E. coli and Salmonella, as well as others. He has been awarded two Massey Research Team Medals, published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has research interests in other genomics fields such as metagenomics. He is currently a member of the Science Leadership Team of the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre.
Professor Anna Brown – College of Creative Arts
Professor Brown is the founder and research lead of Toi Āria: Design for Public Good in the College of Creative Arts. This research unit harnesses design for public good to enable positive social change by connecting organisations, government and communities, particularly of the ‘people most affected’. She is a Principal Investigator at Te Punaha Mātatini Centre of Research Excellence hosted by the University of Auckland, an Associate Investigator at QuakeCore, and Special Advisor to the Digital Council. Professor Brown is an award-winning practising designer with an international profile in book design, most recently Conversātiō — in the company of bees with Anne Noble and Zara Stanhope. She has completed commissions nationally and internationally with visual artists, curators, editors and musicians. She is chair of Massey University Press and enjoys supervising postgraduate students across the Master of Design, Master of Fine Arts and PhD programmes.
Professor Isabel Castro – College of Sciences
Professor Castro is a wildlife biologist with a passion for solving conservation problems, making new biological findings, and working with technology. Her strengths are in connecting and moving between several fields of enquiry and in making associations with scientists in other areas to answer research questions, and in working with communities, particularly Māori. Her fascination with the biological sciences has driven her to hold degrees in microbiology (Bachelor of Science), environmental biology (Master of Science) and behavioural ecology (PhD). Therefore, her research and that of her graduate students falls within four general themes in wildlife biology: conservation and behaviour, parasites and pathogens, anatomy and physiology, and conservation technology held together by a unifying goal, the conservation of Aotearoa New Zealand species and their ecosystems. As an example, her research in collaboration with Māori includes a project led by Ngati Kuta and Te Patukeha from Ipipiri (Bay of Islands) researching brown kiwi Whakapapa. This research has taken advantage of numerous translocations of kiwi in Ipipiri, as well as the translocation to Ponui Island and is producing a wealth of information regarding the effects of population mixing, inbreeding, and outbreeding in the management of this taonga species.
Professor Cogger, Greener and Harvey.
Professor Naomi Cogger – College of Sciences
Professor Cogger is an epidemiologist with a passion for research and teaching. Her research is focused on detecting, controlling, and managing diseases that impact animals, animal welfare, and farmers' livelihoods. Professor Cogger has also designed and delivered epidemiology training programs to doctors and veterinarians to improve responsiveness to diseases that threaten human health, animal health and food security. She has recently been appointed Director of Massey's EpiCentre. She also leads the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) Collaborating Centre in Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health, which focuses on providing world-leading veterinary epidemiology and public health expertise and support collaborations in the Asia-Pacific region.
Professor Bethan Greener – College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor Greener specialises in international security related topics. She has published three books (one co-authored and one edited collection) as well as a numerous chapters and articles in journals such as International Peacekeeping, Critical Military Studies, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Policing and Society, Alternatives and the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Professor Greener is also significantly involved in a range of Track 1.5 and Track II diplomatic efforts, has worked with the United Nations Police Division and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, and is currently engaged in a research partnership project with the New Zealand Army.
Professor Clare Harvey – College of Health
Professor Harvey’s research is driven by a long-standing passion to support better health care for everyone, focusing on service provision, professional practice, and patient outcomes. Primary health care is especially important to her, particularly where disparity through cultural difference, geographic isolation, and other social determinants of health affect the care that individuals and communities receive. Professor Harvey has been the recipient of research excellence awards in Australia and has worked with international research colleagues to examine the effects of budget constraints on the quality of care. She has just completed a longitudinal, multi-level study in Queensland, Australia that evaluated the work of nurse navigators who are employed to assist people living with long term conditions. The study investigated individual, social, economic, professional, and service impact.
Professor Hickson, Hoare and Horrocks.
Professor Rebecca Hickson – College of Sciences
Professor Hickson specialises in beef production from surplus dairy calves, with her research spanning genetics and breeding, rearing, and finishing of dairy-beef cattle from production, environmental and animal welfare perspectives. She has strong collaborations with industry, reflecting the increasing importance of dairy-beef to the beef and dairy industries. She completed her PhD at Massey University in 2009. Professor Hickson has published 145 peer-reviewed articles and has 32 current or completed post-graduate students. She currently chairs the Massey University Animal Ethics Committee.
Professor Karen Hoare – College of Health
Professor Hoare is a Nurse Practitioner for Children and Young People and works in partnership with four general practitioners in a practice in South Auckland as well as being the Post Graduate Director for the School of Nursing. Professor Hoare has implemented new models of care into general practice that result in case managing infants, children and young people. Originally trained as an adult and children’s nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children, Gt. Ormond St, London and Watford General Hospital, she later qualified as a health visitor in the UK (specialist community public health nurse). Her training as a nurse practitioner occurred during a two-year posting to the UK’s Medical Research Council’s Dunn Nutrition Unit in The Gambia, West Africa where her research career was also launched. Her experience of living in The Gambia with some of the world’s poorest people galvanised her to become involved in international development and subsequently the Sustainable Development Goals. She was founder of the UK charity development Direct. Her research interests and expertise are in grounded theory methodology, improving health outcomes for children and young people and upholding Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Professor Ingrid Horrocks – College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor Horrocks is a travel writer, essayist, literary scholar and poet. Her books include, Where We Swim, a blend of memoir, essay, travel and nature writing published in New Zealand and Australia in 2021, two poetry books, a co-edited collection of essays, Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, and a book on the history of women wanderers with Cambridge University Press, Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility. Both her scholarly and creative work have been nationally and internationally acclaimed, including a lead review in the Times Literary Supplement, and is frequently anthologised. She is on the International Board of NonfictioNOW, an Aotearoa Consultant Editor for Sydney Review of Books, and a regular peer reviewer for a range of publishers, journals, and funding bodies. Professor Horrocks is also a dedicated and innovative teacher. She was integral to the team that introduced the Bachelor of Arts Creative Writing and the Masters in Creative Writing at Massey and has been the recipient of a College Teaching Award. Her newest course developments draw on the increasing ecological focus of her writing and research.
Professor Kenney, Kruger and Ktori.
Professor Christine Kenney – College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor Kenney, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāi Tahu, is the Director of Te Toi Whakaruruhau o Aotearoa, the EQC Mātauranga Māori Disaster Risk Reduction Research Centre, and Director of External Relations within the School of Psychology. A disaster sociologist with a background in the health sector, Professor Kenney’s research and policy work centres on disaster risk reduction and humanitarian issues. She has global research expertise, having implemented projects in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and her work with Indigenous communities is internationally recognised as best practice. Professor Kenney regularly works with the World Health Organisation and United Nations agencies, notably UNDRR, UNESCO, and UNOCHA. She is the inaugural chair of the UNDRR/ISC Indigenous Disaster Science caucus, an invited author of the United Nation’s 2022 Global Assessment Report and New Zealand’s nominee on the non-economic losses committee of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Warsaw Mechanism for Loss and Damages.
Professor Rozanne Kruger – College of Health
Professor Kruger is the discipline leader of the Master of Science (Nutrition and Dietetics) in the College of Health. She has always been inspired by food and nutrition and completed her dietetic training and PhD in South Africa. Early in her career she got involved in training dietitians, academia and research, and prior to arriving in New Zealand, she was Head of Food and Nutrition at the University of Pretoria. She joined Massey and was instrumental in developing and establishing the successful Master of Science (Nutrition and Dietetics) programme. She has contributed to developing professional competencies for the profession and serves on the Council of Deans of Nutrition and Dietetics Australia and New Zealand. As a nutrition researcher, she is passionate about developing novel dietary assessment strategies, exploring dietary intake and behaviour patterns, and applying this in clinical dietetics, body composition and metabolic health research. She is part of two Health Research Council-funded research teams, investigating the gut microbiome in New Zealand women, and novel dietary assessment strategies.
Professor Andre Ktori – College of Creative Arts
Professor Ktori has worked in convergence media having won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Milia d’Or and Design Council Millennium Product award as a producer. He has worked with broadcasters such as The BBC and SKY TV and has exhibited internationally at venues such as The Tate Britain, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Musée du Louvre. He has also worked in research development programmes in partnership with BBC Innovating and Learning, The Department of Trade and Industry and The European Commission. At Massey, Andre founded the School of Music and Creative Media Production. Most recently he has developed a partnership with Massey and Recorded Music New Zealand to produce the Artisans for the Aotearoa Music Awards on THREE and TVNZ.
Professor Mansvelt, O'Donoghue and Balli.
Professor Juliana Mansvelt – College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor Mansvelt is a social geographer. Her research centres on landscapes and practices of consumption, particularly with regard to the everyday lives of older New Zealanders. She teaches on consumption, social inequality and globalisation. Juliana is author of Geographies of Consumption (2005) and Editor of Green Consumerism: An A-Z Guide (2011) and has been commissioned to write numerous contributions for journals, edited collections, textbooks and reference sources. She is a member of the Health and Ageing Research Team and the Centre for Advanced Retail Studies (Massey University). Juliana has held numerous editorial roles and was recently awarded the New Zealand Geographical Society’s highest award, the Distinguished New Zealand Geographer. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, has received three tertiary teaching awards (including a National Tertiary Teaching Award in 2006), and has published on teaching, learning and professional development. Juliana is actively involved in supporting teaching and learning through involvement in her local community.
Professor Kieran O’Donoghue – College of Health
Professor O’Donoghue is a registered social worker, the Head of the School of Social Work and the Associate Dean Academic for the College of Health. He has published extensively on social work theory and practice, professional supervision, and the social work profession. He is the lead editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work Supervision, which brought together a group of 45 international supervision scholars, researchers, supervisors, and practitioners, to examine and advance social work supervision internationally. Kieran’s work has had an impact on social work practice, supervision, and the social work profession in Aotearoa New Zealand, Singapore and Fiji. He is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Social Work, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Professor Hatice Ozer Balli – Massey Business School
Professor Balli is an internationally recognised Applied Econometrician who works in multi-sector areas and whose collaboration and expertise are highly valued and sought-after by academics and practitioners. Her research at Massey University spans the fields of international economics/finance, banking, property, energy economics, Islamic finance/economics and tourism economics. Professor Ozer Balli has served on the editorial board of seven international journals. She has received several awards, including The Certificate of Excellence in Research Impact: True MBS Star, College of Business Early Career Research Award, the prestigious Emerald EFMD/MENA research fund award, young researcher RBNZ-NZESG award by NZ Econometric Study Group, Dr. J. Walter Primeaux and Natalie A. Primeaux Award for Excellence in Economic Education and Research. Since she joined Massey in 2018, she has published 45 journal articles attracting high numbers of citations. Her work has made a major impact and has been featured in popular international press such as Wall Street Journal, Publico, El Pais.
Professor Mannetje, Taylor and Waterland.
Professor Andrea ‘t Mannetje – College of Health
Professor Mannetje’s main area of research is occupational and environmental epidemiology. Her work aims to identify work-related and environmental risk factors for disease, thereby contributing towards their primary prevention. Her background is in cancer epidemiology, but since commencing her work at Massey University in 2003 she has expanded her research focus in other areas such as neurodegenerative diseases, birth defects, and inflammatory bowel disease. She has conducted benchmark studies into New Zealanders’ environmental exposure to pollutants, which has improved our understanding of what determines exposure and how New Zealand compares to other countries. Andrea has a particular interest in pesticide exposure and her research has made important contributions towards quantifying New Zealanders’ exposure to pesticides and showing that leukemia, lymphoma, and motor neurone disease are associated with exposure to pesticides in the workplace.
Professor Kerry Taylor – College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Kerry Taylor is an historian specialising in the history of political dissent in New Zealand and is a leading scholar in the ‘new history’ of international communism. Since 2005 has been a member of the editorial board of Labour History, the leading journal in his field. He is also a member of the Board of Massey University Press and has previously been on the editorial boards of the New Zealand Journal of History and Political Science. He is Director of the W.H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy, a board member of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres and is a Trustee of the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust. He has held research fellowships at the National Library, Te Papa and most recently at Peking University. Professor Taylor is head of the new School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication, having been on the Executive Group of the College of Humanities and Social Science since 2009.
Professor Mark Waterland – College of Sciences
Professor Waterland’s research lies at the intersection between nanoscience, molecular spectroscopy and the applied sciences. Applications of his research range from the ultrafast dynamics of charge-transfer processes in solar energy conversion, to properties of photonic crystals and detection of the COVID-19 spike protein down to femtomolar concentration. He was a Foundation for Research Science and Technology Postdoctoral Scholar and has been awarded Marsden funding as a principal investigator and MBIE funding as co-applicant on four occasions. He is an associate investigator with the MacDiarmid Institute and the Riddet Institute. He is a Fellow and former President of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, and currently leads the New Zealand Tertiary Chemistry Educators Group.
Professor Weston and Ye.
Professor Jenny Weston – College of Sciences
Professor Weston is a Massey Bachelor of Veterinary Science graduate who returned as a clinical teacher in 2002. She has worked with dairy cattle for most of her clinical career and research interests include a number of important diseases of cattle. In 2016 she was appointed Academic Dean of Tāwharau Ora (the School of Veterinary Science) and has led the delivery of the Bachelor of Veterinary Science since that time. She has been an accreditation site team member for the review of veterinary programmes in Australia and Asia and been very involved with the past two accreditation reviews of the Massey BVSc. Her research interests now also include demographics of the veterinary profession and wellbeing of veterinarians and veterinary students. She is a past-president of the New Zealand Veterinary Association and currently a board member of the Veterinary Council of New Zealand.
Professor AiQian Ye – Riddet Institute
Professor Ye’s research focused on physical and chemical characteristics of milk components, interactions during processing, and functionality in food systems. His research experiences were to understand the relationships between structure, functional properties of proteins and fat in dairy products, to investigate the interactions of minerals (calcium and iron) with milk proteins and fortification of minerals in dairy products. His research also incorporated the characterisation of interactions between milk proteins and polysaccharides in solutions and emulsions. Professor Ye has now broadened his research to investigate the behaviour of food structure during digestion and the influences of the structure and physical properties of food on the digestion and absorption in the body. Professor Ye has published over 151 peer-reviewed articles in high-ranking international journals in the research field. He is the author of 10 PCT patents.
Massey's newest Associate Professors
College of Creative Arts
- Associate Professor Lyn Garrett
- Associate Professor Jason O’Hara
- Associate Professor Raul Ortega Ayala
College of Health
- Dr Jeffery Adams
- Dr Riz Firestone
- Dr Sunia Foliaki
- Dr Christina Severinsen
- Dr Polly Yeung
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
- Dr Robyn Andrews
- Dr Julia Becker
- Dr Lucila De Carvalho
- Dr Trisia Farrelly
- Dr Richard Fletcher
- Dr Stephen Hill
- Dr Heather Kempton
- Dr Russell Prince
- Dr Gerard Prinsen
- Dr Peter Rawlins
- Dr Matthew Shepherd
- Dr Rochelle Steward-Withers
College of Sciences
- Dr Reza Abdollahi
- Dr Louise Brough
- Dr Lucy Burkitt
- Dr Jonathan Kitchen
- Dr Kevin Lawrence
- Dr Libby Liggins
- Dr Tammy Lynch
- Dr Jonathan Marshall
Massey Business School
- Dr David Brougham
- Dr Sandy Bulmer
- Dr Jason Mika
- Dr Nitha Palakshappa
- Dr Yafeng Qin
- Dr Shamim Shakur
- Dr Warwick Stent
- Dr Iqbal Syed
- Dr George Wu