Distinguished Professor Steven Ratuva has been appointed the first pro-vice chancellor Pacific of the University of Canterbury.
Prof Ratuva who also leads the university’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies as its director recently became the first Pacific person in the world to be promoted to Distinguished Professor, the highest and rarely achieved status in academia.
In 2022 he was appointed by New Zealand’s Governor General as a Commissioner and board member of the New Zealand Climate Change Commission.
He was also appointed into the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand in addition to other New Zealand government board and advisory committee appointments.
Prof Ratuva won the 2022 University of Canterbury Sustainability Research award in the wake of being co-winner of the university’s research medal in 2019 and winner of New Zealand’s highest award in social science research, the Metge Medal in 2020.
In the same year, he also became the first Fijian to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society, one of New Zealand’s highest academic honours.
He was also awarded a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in 2018 and is also the Chair of the international Political Science Association Research Committee on Climate Security and Planetary Politics and leads a number of international research project teams.
In recognition of his global interdisciplinary expertise he was invited to deliver the internationally prestigious annual Palgrave-Macmillan-Springer lecture in 2022, titled “The role of social science and humanities in global peace.”
Prof Ratuva hails from Yale village on the Island of Kadavu.
