Fulbright Awards for three Otago academics

Three leading University of Otago researchers have received Fulbright awards to undertake three to five months of study in their fields of interest at institutions in the United States.

Professor Andrew Geddis (Faculty of Law) and Associate Professor Fiona McDonald (Department of Physiology) receive Fulbright New Zealand Senior Scholar Awards and Ms Jacinta Ruru (Faculty of Law) a Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Senior Scholar Award.

Professor Geddis will use his award to research the socio-legal context of freedom of expression in New Zealand, at Arizona State University in Tempe and the University of California, Los Angeles. He will look at formal legal restrictions that have constrained those wishing to engage in dissenting speech as well as the cultural and historical background to such laws, including recent influences from the United States.


Fiona McDonald
Associate Professor McDonald will travel to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to undertake studies into the as yet unknown function of a protein named COMMD10. She aims to find out where COMMD10 is usually located in cells of the body and what its normal role is.

Ms Ruru will research indigenous challenges to Western property law, at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon and Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law at Arizona State University. She aims to explore the potential for property law to be recalibrated to support indigenous claims to own and/or govern Crown or publicly-owned lands (such as within national parks) and natural resources like fresh water.

Fulbright New Zealand offers a range of educational and cultural exchange awards for New Zealand and American graduate students, academics, artists and professionals to study, research, teach and present their work in each other’s countries.