New chair for SPEaR Committee
Professor Richard Bedford, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Waikato University, has been appointed chair of SPEaR. Richard takes over from the inaugural chair, Dr Arthur Grimes, and says he is looking forward to the challenge.
“There are huge gains possible from improving coordination of the knowledge base. The more collaborative headway we can make as researchers and evaluators, the more research and evaluation can be used by decision makers and impact on the key issues New Zealand faces.”
Richard said that, as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Waikato, he had seen the benefits of coordinated approaches to inter-disciplinary research programmes.
“I believe the same opportunities for improvements through collaboration exist for Government agency programmes.
“I am excited by the opportunity to independently chair SPEaR to assist with brokering progress in social policy research and evaluation.”
Richard brings a wealth of experience to the position. He has a PhD in human geography from the Australian National University, and is a specialist in migration studies. Between 2001 and 2003, he was academic adviser to the Ministerial Advisory Group on Immigration.
As well as his research administration position, he is Professor of Geography at Waikato, and has won several major research grants. These include funding from the Marsden Fund, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and Environment Bay of Plenty’s Smart Growth Project. He has also held international research contracts and consultancies, and is an experienced supervisor of postgraduate student research.
Richard has published extensively, and he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2000, in recognition of his research on population movement in the Asia-Pacific region.
He also has extensive experience in committee work in the social sciences and public policy areas.
