Tag Archives: Victoria University

NZ Study Confirms Environmental Benefits of Building Cycleways

NZ Study Confirms Environmental Benefits of Building Cycleways

“A new study by researchers from the University of Otago, Wellington and Victoria University has confirmed that building cycleways benefits the planet because swapping four wheels for two leads to a reduction in carbon…

Japanese Tertiary Student Embraces Maori Language

Japanese Tertiary Student Embraces Maori Language

Te Karere TVNZ presents a video about an enthused Japanese student who has the passion for the Maori language at Victoria University in Wellington. She spoke with Kereama Wright….

New Zealand Fault Hole Revealing Secrets of Earth’s Crust

New Zealand Fault Hole Revealing Secrets of Earth’s Crust

Scientists drilling a 1.3-km deep hole into the Alpine Fault in New Zealand’s South Island say they are already gaining valuable insights into the Earth’s crust less than a quarter of the way down. The…

Mumbai Composer Mikey McCleary Reinterpreting Bollywood

Mumbai Composer Mikey McCleary Reinterpreting Bollywood

Mumbai-based New Zealander, songwriter and composer Mikey McCleary, 45, is a musical jack-of-all-trades making it in the Indian advertising world reinterpreting Bollywood songs and writing music requiring an “international-esque” sound. One of McCleary’s most famous…

Holly Ade-Simpson Lands Sydney Google Internship

Holly Ade-Simpson Lands Sydney Google Internship

Victoria University student Holly Ade-Simpson will join the cream of global tech wizards this summer as she interns at Google’s Sydney headquarters. Google was rated this year by professional networking site LinkedIn as the most…

Reading More Online but Taking in Less, New Zealand Study

Reading More Online but Taking in Less, New Zealand Study

The internet is making more information available than ever before, but it’s not necessarily making us smarter, New Zealand researchers have said. In a study titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Impact of the Internet…

Astronaut Tweets Picture of NZ from Space Station

Astronaut Tweets Picture of NZ from Space Station

A German astronaut has tweeted a stunning picture of Banks Peninsula from space. Dr Alexander Gerst, who has a Masters in Earth sciences from Victoria University, is traveling aboard the International Space Station. “Nice…

Perceptive Debut Novel Immediately Engrossing

Perceptive Debut Novel Immediately Engrossing

Twenty-one-year-old Sebastian Hampson, an art history and literature student at Victoria University, writes with an assurance that belies his years, according to the Australian, and his debut novel The Train to Paris, inspired by…

Learning to Stand Upright in New Zealand

Learning to Stand Upright in New Zealand

Historically, geographically, culturally – there are many points of comparison between New Zealand and its neighbour to the west, Australia. But there are notable differences. Victoria University’s Professor Harry Ricketts examines migration in New…

National Australia Bank Appoints Tech Whizz Geraldine McBride

National Australia Bank Appoints Tech Whizz Geraldine McBride

Victoria University-educated Geraldine McBride, founder and chief executive of software company MyWave, has been appointed director of National Australia Bank (NAB) and will join the board in March. McBride’s appointment is a clear demonstration of…

Mutual Interest Means Increase in India-NZ Study Numbers

Mutual Interest Means Increase in India-NZ Study Numbers

Indian studies is attracting more and more students in New Zealand, where seven out of the eight universities offer these courses, according to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, director of the New Zealand India Research Institute (NZIRI)…

Enabling Teens to Learn Through Responsibility

Enabling Teens to Learn Through Responsibility

Fulbright scholar and Victoria University senior lecturer Dr Barrie Gordon was in DeKalb, Illinois this month giving a presentation to students at Northern Illinois University on a teaching model, which is aimed at helping…

Dropping Sentimentality with Print Paywalls

Dropping Sentimentality with Print Paywalls

“Last November Mike Darcey, then a top executive at BSkyB, a British satellite-television company, received a phone call from Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation,” The Economist writes. “Murdoch wanted him to run…

New Zealand Landscape Plays Active Role in Films

New Zealand Landscape Plays Active Role in Films

“If a country could be eligible for a best actor award, New Zealand could be in the running for every gong going,” writes Megan Lane. In the piece for BBC News Magazine, Lane explores…

Swiss Army Should Check out This Hybrid Design

Swiss Army Should Check out This Hybrid Design

Victoria University industrial design student Joe Levy, 20, has “managed to cram in functionality” with his SpoolStool, which serves as everything from a chair, to a foot rest, to a table, to a place…

Samoan wins first ever NZ Pacific Scholarship Award

Samoan wins first ever NZ Pacific Scholarship Award

Outstanding Samoan student Epifania Afano’s winning of the first ever New Zealand Pacific Scholarship Academic Achievement Award was recognised by the Samoa Observer. Epifania is a received her award at Victoria University, Wellington. Epifania…

Militant on the Mainland

Militant on the Mainland

“It sucks to be a possum in New Zealand,” according to The Atlantic’s Rachel Gross. “Cars swerve to hit you. Guns point toward you. People feed you little green pellets that taste like cinnamon;…

Critical Mass

Critical Mass

The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature edited by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams of Victoria University is reviewed by Peter Pierce for The Australian. He traverses the customary literary punch-ups that…

Cooking Stones With The Force

Cooking Stones With The Force

Hangi rocks could reveal the magnetic history of the Earth going back hundreds of years, new research from Victoria University suggests. The findings, which were presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical…

Prize for Elegance and Economy

Prize for Elegance and Economy

Wellington author Emma Martin has won the £5,000 Commonwealth short story prize for Two Girls in a Boat, which chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo described as “gorgeous, elegant and spare”. The story was chosen,…

Shakier Isles Than First Thought

Shakier Isles Than First Thought

A study has found earthquake-prone New Zealand is even more unstable than previously thought, after Victoria University scientists discovered deep tremors lasting up to 30 minutes along the country’s biggest fault line, the Alpine…

Banking on International Fees

Banking on International Fees

International education is now New Zealand’s fifth biggest export, annually worth $2.5 billion. Chief executive of Education New Zealand Grant McPherson said China, Japan and South Korea were New Zealand’s top markets for international…

Distinguished Scientist

Distinguished Scientist

Molecular physicist Sir Paul Callaghan, who was best known for his work with magnetic resonance, a field that has practical applications in everything from health care to industrial production, has died. He was 64….

Betty Fondly Remembered

Betty Fondly Remembered

New Zealand freshwater algae expert Dr Elizabeth Flint, known as Betty, who was still at the wheel of her 1958 Ford Consul in her 90s, has died, aged 102. Flint’s friend Catherine Haines writes…

Alleged Fraudster Arrested

Alleged Fraudster Arrested

A New Zealander has been arrested in Australia for alleged embezzling $16 million from Queensland Health. 36-year-old Hohepa Morehu-Barlow — also known as Joel Barlow — had been evading police since Thursday afternoon when…

Alien Disappearance

Alien Disappearance

Without any human intervention, the Argentine ant — the world’s most invasive species — is disappearing from New Zealand. The alien ant arrived in New Zealand in 1990 and has since marched across our…

Keeping Germs at Home

Keeping Germs at Home

An editorial written by Victoria University sociologist Professor Kevin Dew and published in the British Medical Journal says “presenteeism”, prevalent among health workers and those in other caring or teaching occupations, was…

With Light in Mind

With Light in Mind

A design by a group of Victoria University students, inspired by the New Zealand bach, is the first southern hemisphere entry in the international US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition held…

Exciting Nano Potential

Exciting Nano Potential

Victoria University PhD graduates Dr Fern Kelly and Dr Kerstin Burridge have completed parallel research projects pioneering a way of embedding tiny nanoparticles of gold and silver in New Zealand wool. When the precious…

Native Methuselah

Native Methuselah

“The animal that may well be New Zealand’s most bizarrely instructive species at first glance looks surprisingly humdrum,” writes The New York Times’ Natalie Angier. “The tuatara — whose name comes from the Maori…

On Race and Harawira

On Race and Harawira

Senior Lecturer at Victoria University’s School of English Film Theatre and Media Studies Dr Alice Te Punga Somerville discusses Maori party MP Hone Harawira’s recent comments about intermarriage in the Guardian. “Harawira stated to…

Voice like hot treacle

Voice like hot treacle

New Zealand-raised jazz sensation Leila Adu is returning home to perform a series of nationwide concerts throughout May, her first in five years. Of Ghanian descent, Adu is touring to support her most recent…

Manhire made happy

Manhire made happy

Director of Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters and New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate Bill Manhire has had a poem — My Childhood In Ireland — published in The New Yorker. It is…

Robotic travel plans

Robotic travel plans

Victoria University associate professor and tourism futurologist Dr Ian Yeoman predicts self-cleaning hotel rooms, sleep deprivation tablets to fight off sightseeing fatigue, robot prostitution and hotel rooms so clever they’ll be able to detect moods and change…

Behind the Foliage

Behind the Foliage

Dr Kevin Burns and a team of researchers from Victoria University of Wellington have discovered that New Zealand trees have evolved a camouflage defense mechanism to protect themselves from extinct giant birds. “Plants are…

With breath for peace

With breath for peace

Richard Nunns, an authority on Maori traditional instruments or taonga puoro, performed the Gillian Whitehead composed “Hineputehue” at Luther College, Minnesota with the New Zealand String Quartet last month. Dunedin based Whitehead wrote “Hineputehue”…

Icy Developments

Icy Developments

Victoria University glaciologist Dr Andrew Mackintosh has released findings of a study which shows that southern  hemisphere glaciers evolve quite differently to those in the north. “Don’t assume that warming will be uniform over…

Cheap sticks

Cheap sticks

Wellington-based percussion group Strike is in Singapore to play as part of a New Zealand festival. Strike met at Victoria University, when they were mostly playing chamber music, and now are a group of…

East Mends West

East Mends West

Victoria University professor of philosophy Kolkata-born Jayshankar Lal Shaw says philosophy helps individuals with a “global perspective and a clear notion on how to alleviate pain from the world”, especially during times of unrest….

Drilling For Knowledge

Drilling For Knowledge

Victoria University’s Tim Naish is one of a hundred scientists from 40 different countries working on a map of climate change. The Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) is digging deep below the Ross Ice Shelf to determine…

History Lessons in Mood

History Lessons in Mood

Professor Sydney Shep, senior lecturer in print and book culture at Victoria University, has uncovered the emoticon’s “pre-history” stumbling upon emoticons in an 1882 typographic journal at St. Bride’s Printing Library in London. There, on the page,…

Moko in Vogue

Moko in Vogue

A French fashion designer’s use of moko in advertisements for his latest collection has caused a stir in NZ. Jean Paul Gaultier’s campaign shots, featuring male and female models with Maori facial tattooing, have…

Lord of the Rigs Honoured in NZ

Lord of the Rigs Honoured in NZ

Wade Thompson, US-based chairman, president and CEO of the world’s largest recreation vehicle company, is to receive an honorary Doctor of Commerce degree from Victoria University. Thompson, 66, completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree at Victoria in…

Digging for Gold in Antarctica

Digging for Gold in Antarctica

A team of Victoria and Massey University scientists has been recognised for their development of portable nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology in Antarctica. Massey’s Robin Dykstra, Professor Paul Callaghan of the MacDiarmid Institute, Dr Craig Eccles of Magritek…

Tribute to Peter Munz

Tribute to Peter Munz

Historian, author and Victoria University of Wellington emeritus professor Peter Munz has died aged 85. Born in Chemnitz, Germany, Munz was part of the wave of mostly Jewish intellectuals who fled fascist…

“A Country Waiting to be Explored”

“A Country Waiting to be Explored”

South Africa’s Cape Times features a travel special on NZ, with a focus on Auckland and Wellington. ” is not difficult to see what makes NZ attractive, both as a holiday destination and a potential new…

A Life Behind the Lens

A Life Behind the Lens

Filmmaker, writer and photographer John Patrick Feeney has died in Wellington aged 84. Born in Ngaruawahia and educated at Victoria University, Feeney served as a lieutenant in the Royal NZ Naval Reserve during World…

Former AB and Famous Father

Former AB and Famous Father

Former All Black Brian Fitzpatrick has died aged 75. A sturdily built five eigths, Fitzpatrick was a strong runner and tackler. He made two tours with All Black sides in the early…

Lord Cooke of Thorndon: A Legal Great

Lord Cooke of Thorndon: A Legal Great

Robin Brunskill Cooke, NZ’s most renowned jurist, has died aged 80. Educated at Wellington’s Victoria University and Caius College at Cambridge, Robin Cooke made his reputation early on with a high profile libel case…

Moko Takes to US Streets

Moko Takes to US Streets

The sale of Maori themed Halloween costumes by an American store has angered Maori leaders. Halloween Town in Los Angeles is advertising the Maori Facial Tattoo Kit for $US10. Rotorua academic Ngahihi o te ra…

The Deal’s Not Just Big, it’s Massive

The Deal’s Not Just Big, it’s Massive

New York based company, Massive Inc, of which Wellingtonian Claudia Batten is a part owner, has been sold to Microsoft for up to $US 400 million. Founded four years ago, Massive Inc pioneered a…

Who is the Typical Kiwi?

Who is the Typical Kiwi?

An international study on cultural stereotypes, led by the US National Institutes of Health, has concluded that there is no relation between supposed cultural characteristics and the actual traits identified in real people. “People…

Martian Rocks get Maori Names

Martian Rocks get Maori Names

The American space agency NASA has given Maori names to rocks on Mars, thanks to the influence of the film Whale Rider. The Mars robotic rover Opportunity is exploring near a cliff named after the late…

Whinge Benefits

Whinge Benefits

Research undertaken at Victoria University suggests a positive side to gossiping and whining at work. According to the report, “whingeing to a sympathetic co-worker both reflects and constructs the close relationship between team members, thus consolidating the…

Next Stop Nobel?

Next Stop Nobel?

Professor Paul Callaghan of Wellington has won the prestigious Ampere Prize. The biannual award – one of the most esteemed in the international science community – recognises outstanding work in the field of magnetic resonance. It is…

A Smelly Solution

A Smelly Solution

Skunk Shot, an odorous gel developed by Victoria University scientists, has become police issue in several US cities, including LA and Richland County, Colombia. Originally designed as a cat and dog repellent, Skunk Shot is being used…