Warwick Murray

Warwick Murray FNZGS, DNZG (born 1972) is a New Zealand academic, educationalist and musician.

Murray with the 2013 Arabic version of his 2006 book Geographies of Globalization

Born in Edgbaston, Birmingham and raised in Hereford, England, Murray graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1993, where he also gained a PhD 1997.[1] He has held academic posts at the University of the South Pacific, and Brunel University (UK). He was appointed professor of human geography and development studies in 2010 at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, which he joined in 2001. He has held sabbatical posts as visiting professor in geography at Cambridge University (UK) (2019) and Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile (Chile) (2017) as well as in Latin American studies at Oxford University (UK) (2015).

In 2006, Murray won a New Zealand National Tertiary Teaching Award for Sustained Excellence, and in 2007 the New Zealand Geographical Society (NZGS) President's Award for Teaching Excellence.[2] He was awarded the NZGS President's Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision in 2015 in recognition of supervision of research on Latin America.[3] In 2019, he won the Distinguished New Zealand Geographer Medal which is the highest honour in New Zealand geography.[4]

As a researcher, Murray has published books, articles, or chapters in the fields of development, rural, and economic geography, focusing especially on Chile and Latin America, as well as the Pacific Islands, the Asia Pacific and New Zealand.[5] He is a commentator on national television and radio international development and Latin American affairs,[6] and is the author of the textbook Geographies of Globalization, co-authored with Professor John Overton. From 2002 to 2010, he was the editor-in-chief of the journal Asia Pacific Viewpoint. In 2007 he founded the Victoria Institute for Links with Latin America and has also served as co-president of the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia. He is currently Vice-President of the New Zealand Geographical Society (2017–19) and will become President from January 2020.

Murray is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. A four-part show featuring original songs he plays in lectures called The Singing Geographer aired on National Radio New Zealand in 2012/13.[2] He records and performs geographical lectures on a Youtube playlist called ‘Georambles’ He has also had three New Zealand top 20 albums with The Strait Shooters, Funky Jandal, and The Fabulous Murray Brothers. The latter spent three weeks in the New Zealand Albums Top 20 with 'Sing It Chap!', peaking at number 6[7] and number 1 on the New Zealand Heatseeker chart of January 22, 2018.[8]