Professor Hugh Campbell, of the Sociology, Gender Studies and Criminology Programme, is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Humanities (Interim).
Contact
Email hugh.campbell@otago.ac.nz
Current teaching
Hugh’s current teaching involves: introduction to the sociology of Aotearoa New Zealand; the sociology of modernity, the state and bureaucracy; colonisation and farming; and the politics of transforming global dynamics of food, farming and the environment.
Research interests
Hugh received his PhD in Rural Sociology and has spent his career examining dynamics of change in farming worlds. He led a series of large projects examining the emergence of alternative styles of farming (like organic and Integrated Pest Management systems) in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1990s.
In the early 2000s, he co-led the Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS) project which comprised a nine-year longitudinal study of over 100 farms and orchards examining social, economic and environmental dimensions of farm sustainability.
He also publishes extensively about theories of agri-food transformation, neoliberalisation, the role of audit systems in transformation, food regime theory, and de-colonisation as a driver of farming change.
In recent years he has turned his attention more specifically to the legacies of colonisation in farming worlds, the role of farms in the political and ecological transformation of colonial Aotearoa New Zealand and the recent rise of reactionary right wing political energies in farming politics.