Professor Eric Pawson
Position
Cultural, Environmental and Historical Geography
Qualifications
M.A., D.Phil.(Oxf.)
Contact Details
Room: 408
Phone: +64 3 364 2987 ext. 6930
Fax: +64 3 364 2907
eric.pawson@canterbury.ac.nz
Postal address: Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
Awards
Distinguished New Zealand Geographer Medal, 2007
University of Canterbury Teaching Award, 2008
National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award, 2009
Distinguished
Service Award, NZ Geographical Society, 2010
Research
1) landscape change and environmental histories: a jointly authored book entitled Seeds of Empire. The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand was published by IB Tauris in 2011. It stemmed from a Marsden funded project (2004-07) called ‘Empires of grass’ which sought to delineate the processes involved in the transformation of native vegetation types into the European grasslands on which New Zealand's colonial economy was built. In turn, this developed out of earlier work co-leading the New Zealand environmental histories project. Another aspect of this research interest is the study of plant mobility and landscape change.
2) biological economies: this project is supported by the Marsden Fund (2010-13) and involves geographers and sociologists from five New Zealand campuses interested in raising the visibility of social science as a means of understanding change in New Zealand’s biologically-based economic sectors (food, fibre and tourism) The team aims to develop this understanding theoretically in order to contribute to international debates about value chains, eco-verification, carbon miles, sustainability and climate change.
3) geographical education, specifically aspects of active learning including problem-based learning and service learning. A co-edited book Active Learning and Student Engagement has been published by Routledge in 2010.
Teaching
- GEOG 106: Global Environmental Change
- GEOG 202: Human Geography
- GEOG 309: Research Methods in Geography
- GEOG 402: Sustainable Urban Development
Professional activities:
University of Canterbury: Chair, Advisory Board, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies (2005-09); Convenor, University Working Party on Benchmarking. Co-chair, UC/University Adelaide Governance Board
Organizations: Chair, Editorial Board, New Zealand Geographical Society; Managing Editor, New Zealand Geographer; Advisory Board, Te Ara, On-line Encyclopedia of New Zealand; Social Science Panel, Marsden Fund (2006-08), Royal Society of New Zealand; co-chair, International Network of Learning and Teaching.
Editorial Boards: Environment and History (UK); Geographical Review (US); Journal of Geography in Higher Education (UK); Journal of Historical Geography (UK); Journal of Rural Studies (UK); Kotuitui, On-line Journal of New Zealand Social Science; New Zealand Geographer.
Selected Publications
Please see Eric's UC Research Profile for a full list of publications