University of Canterbury Professor, Paul Millar, is the recipient of the 2022 Pou Aronui Award for distinguished service to humanities-aronui, announced last night by the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
The annual award for distinguished service to aronui humanities is awarded to Professor of English Literature and Digital Humanities in the School of Humanities and Creative Arts Paul Millar, especially for his commitment to growing capacity and expertise in the digital humanities in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Professor Millar’s commitment to growing digital humanities (DH) dates to the 1990s when he began researching text digitisation to teach out-of-print books. In 2001 he secured funding to establish the NZ Electronic Text Centre. In 2011 he co-created the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive and in 2016 established the UC Arts Digital Lab.
During his career he has obtained $2.42 million in funding for DH projects, created nationally significance archives, promoted DH teaching, championed post-disaster humanities research, and served as the first New Zealand President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities.
This year, the Royal Society’s celebration of research, scholarship and innovation (Research Honours Aotearoa), was split over three regions, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin, with two of the 10 awards being presented to University of Canterbury academics in Wellington last night.
The Royal Society Te Apārangi selected the following two University of Canterbury researchers for special awards this year:
- Professor Paul Millar as the winner of the 2022 Pou Aronui Award, for distinguished service to humanities-aronui over a sustained period of time.
- Professor Ann Brower for the 2022 Charles Fleming Award for Environmental Achievement, for the protection of the New Zealand environment. (Professor Brower also won the 2022 UC Innovation Medal).
