Two Victoria University of Wellington academics have been recognised with 2014 Royal Society of New Zealand Research Honours.
Professor Lydia Wevers, Director of the Stout Research Centre at Victoria, is the recipient of the Pou Aronui Award, acknowledging her dedication to promoting the study and enjoyment of New Zealand’s literature, history, arts and culture.
Emeritus Professor David Vere-Jones, associated with Victoria’s School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, received the Jones Medal for his lifetime achievement in statistics, both for his revolutionary research on modelling earthquakes and his teaching of statistics and mathematics in New Zealand.
Professor Wevers is a literary critic and historian, as well as an editor and reviewer. She has been Director of the Stout Research Centre since 2001. The centre was set up to encourage scholarly inquiry into New Zealand society, history and culture.
Her academic research has focussed on New Zealand’s writing and print culture. She is the author of a 2002 book on travel writing and the 2010 Reading on the Farm Victorian Fiction and the Colonial World, as well as many articles, collections and anthologies, on subjects ranging from Australasian romance to contemporary work in cultural studies.
She has served as the chair on a number of boards, assisted in the development of Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand and is a former Vice‐President of the New Zealand Book Council.
Professor Wevers is an Honorary Life Member of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and a Fellow of the Stockholm Collegium of World Literary History. In 2006, she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Literature.
Professor Vere‐Jones is best known for his work on forecasting earthquakes and earthquake risks. He pioneered the application of statistical ‘point processes’ theory to seismology. Point processes theory describe events that occur at discrete points in time or space, such as earthquakes, neuron firings and volcanic eruptions.
In addition to his research output, Emeritus Professor Vere‐Jones has made substantial contributions to mathematical and statistical education in New Zealand.
Professor Vere‐Jones has received numerous honours and distinctions. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1982. He has been an ordinary elected member of the International Statistical Institute since 1978 and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society since 1969.
The awards were presented at the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Science Honours event held in Wellington on Wednesday 26 November.
