Pro-Vice-Chancellor appointed for Te Kete Aronui Division of Humanities

Professor Hugh Campbell has been appointed as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Te Kete Aronui - Division of Humanities, following an expression of interest process and consultation with the Division.

Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson says he is delighted Hugh has agreed to take up this leadership role for a three-year term, having served as interim Pro-Vice-Chancellor to the Division since August last year.

“This an important leadership role for the University, and for our wider communities.

“Te Kete Aronui is full of so many talented people who are deeply passionate about not only the University, but the humanities as a whole.

“Hugh is no exception and he will play a key role in guiding the Division through what will continue to be challenging waters, as well as helping implement Pae Tata and Vision 2040,” Grant says.

Hugh has been committed to Otago and the humanities since he first arrived from the Waikato as an undergraduate student in 1982. This long relationship has a strong impact on his feelings about the role and the University.

“I have made the choice many times to stay at Otago because I intrinsically feel like an Otago person. I went to university here. My children have grown up here, we love it as a place to live. So, you do build up a strong sense of loyalty to the place and become emotionally invested. I want this place to succeed,” Hugh says.

As a student, he initially found a “strong clan” through his undergraduate studies in theatre, and then a lifelong career in his other major in social anthropology.

After completing a master’s in social anthropology at Otago, Hugh was a research assistant at Lincoln University. He then undertook a PhD in rural sociology at a research centre in Australia that specialised in mainly government funded research into social change in rural Australia and the consequences of policy changes for farmers.

He says this was an unusual place to do a PhD as there was limited opportunity to learn teaching skills, however his theatre studies at Otago meant he was already confident in this aspect of academia.

The centre attracted a lot of external research grants, and undertook a lot of policy advocacy and community research during a time of serious social and economic crisis for rural regions. This gave him valuable skills for his return to Otago.

Arriving in 1994, as a lecturer in a time of economic austerity, Hugh was able to engage in externally-funded research and address policy questions of the moment.

He has served in a breadth of leadership and service roles since. He really enjoys initiating things – this has included serving as the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment in 2010, which subsequently grew into the Centre for Sustainability.  From 2010 to 2018, he was Head of the new Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work.

Hugh served as the Division’s Associate Dean Research, before stepping in as interim Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Division. He says these leadership roles meant he was involved up close with the huge challenges the Division has recently been facing.

“I would not have taken up this role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor on a more extended term without having seen that the Humanities is valued and supported at the senior leadership level and that we have the full-throated support of our new Vice-Chancellor.

“Over the last 30 years, I have experienced Otago Humanities at times it has been very successful, and I have experienced it at times when we have faced massive challenges. We are in a massive challenge phase, and my role is to strategise how it can move back towards excellence as a place where research, teaching and advocacy can flourish.”

Hugh firmly believes the most important asset a university has is a talented high-performing staff.

“From dynamic 100-level lecturers to professors engaging as public intellectuals in the compelling issues of the day, to everyone in between, universities thrive when they have talented and dedicated academic and general staff.”

Off campus, Hugh takes the role of public intellectual seriously, and is involved in media and commentary on a variety of rural issues concerning the politics of environmental transitions, the knotty challenge of responding to climate change in industries that are fundamentally premised on producing greenhouse gases, to the prospects of new technologies and approaches to farming.

“In the 21st century, crises are elaborating in new and alarming ways, particularly in climate and environmental change. It is a massively compelling subject.

“For those of us working in this space in the humanities, we know that we are doing a certain kind of important work in the classroom, inspiring people who can do useful and important things in those areas.

“We do a lot of useful research about the human and social dynamics of environmental transitions, but as my career progressed, especially with a really dramatic crisis like climate change. I got to the point where I realised that classroom teaching and focused research is not enough, you have to push on into some difficult spaces of public advocacy.”

As to the role of the humanities in this and other pressing issues, Hugh says he is frustrated by those who see it as superfluous when it is clearly so vital.

“All of us who do research in climate change know this is essentially a social, cultural and governmental problem. As Jerry Carrington, Emeritus Professor and godfather of energy physics at Otago said about 20 years ago, we already have invented every technology we need to achieve a carbon zero society.

“The massive challenge from here on is social, cultural and political. The humanities has an enormous role in terms of recognising we humans are the key element in how to solve really wicked global environmental problems.

“To understand humans, you need the humanities. When we centre the human in our frameworks for understanding and engaging with the world, we give ourselves a much better chance of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

“This Division can help do that, and that is why I’m so excited to be the PVC through the next few years. Plus, the chance to work with a truckload of really talented and intelligent people. That is why any university role, from the smallest to biggest, is a privilege.”