Speakers

John Montgomery is emeritus professor at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Auckland. “Approaches to Auckland” is the classic Hauraki Gulf chart. We can use this chart as a metaphor to highlight the importance of our harbours and surrounding ocean to Auckland’s identity. Through images and background stories he will discuss Auckland’s place in the oceans. Where we came from geologically, the pulse of the gulf as it now is, and how we might chart a sustainable future. People are very concerned about the Hauraki Golf at present and marine reserves. Professor Montgomery has done a lot of good research on marine topics including fish and neuroscience.

The Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery celebrates painter, architect, ecologist and visionary Friedensreich Hundertwasser and contemporary Māori artists. The Austrian New Zealand artist Hundertwasser, who lived in New Zealand from 1973 to 2000, was first and foremost a painter but became involved in architecture and environmental activism because of his concerns about the exploitation of natural resources and ruthless urbanisation. The design of the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery was based on initial sketches by Hundertwasser himself thirty years ago. In this presentation, Dr Joost de Bruin, Director of the Hundertwasser Art Centre, will reflect on Hundertwasser’s legacy and how it is represented in the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery. He will discuss Hundertwasser’s vision of the ‘Five Skins’ that articulates how we are all defined by our bodies, our clothes, our homes, our identity and the earth on which we live.

Matthew Hooton will summarise the main findings of his recent PhD thesis (under examination) on principles of conservatism, drawn from ontology, epistemology, ethics, metaethics and political philosophy.

He will then apply them to the controversy over the taniwha Horotiu in 2011, at which time he was an advisor to the Independent Māori Statutory Board, and consider how they may have assisted the board and Prime Minister John Key manage the issue differently

Peter Lineham is Professor Emeritus of History from Massey University, where he taught for 40 years.

His talk is entitled “Judge William Martin of Judges Bay, the first Chief Justice of New Zealand and his friends”

Peter was awarded the MNZM in 2019 for his services to religious history and the community.

He is awaiting the publishing of a new book called “Weteriana Methodists” 

Our speaker for October is Carmel Claridge.  Carmel may already be known to some of you from her time as Deputy Chairman of the Orakei Local Board. Carmel has an eclectic background, working at various stages of her life as a lawyer, fitness consultant, cleaner, dog groomer, social housing navigator, and now Coordinator of Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou/Court of New Beginnings.

 Carmel is passionate about her mahi at Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou and feels privileged to share the TKTH journey with some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of society – the homeless.

Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou/Court of New Beginnings, is a therapeutic specialist Court set up  in 2010 in response to concerns about recidivist, low-level, public nuisance offending  in the Auckland CBD area. Evaluations of the Court have shown a significant reduction in arrests, nights spent in prison, and accident and emergency visits. Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou is a proven“circuit breaker” for many caught in the revolving door, between prison and the street. It offers guidance and hope to a better life path for those who have the courage to change.

Our September speaker will be Simon Mitchell, Professor and Head of Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland.

Simon works as an anaesthesiologist at Auckland City Hospital, a diving physician at North Shore Hospital (Auckland), and is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. For the last 3 years he has been ranked by Expertscape.com as the world’s foremost expert in both decompression sickness and air embolism.

Simon has a long career in sport, scientific, commercial, and military diving. He was first to dive and identify three historic deep shipwrecks in Australia and New Zealand, including one in 2002 which was the deepest wreck dive undertaken worldwide at the time. He was conferred Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006, and was the Rolex Diver of the Year in 2015.

Simon is going to give a talk about the rescue of the Thai school boys from the caves in the Tham Luang Forest Park in the far north of Thailand in July 2019.

The Honourable John Priestley attended Kings School & College and studied Law at the University of Auckland. John carried out postgraduate study at the University of Virginia and at Cambridge.   His doctoral thesis was on “Matrimonial Property Systems.”

John commenced practising Law in 1968 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1994 and to the High Court Bench in 2000. Among his many interests and involvement in tribunals was that of being Deputy Chairman of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority and Chairman of the Deportation Review Tribunal.

With the rising number of people fleeing their homes because of war, political upheavals, poverty famine & climate change. refugee numbers are rising. How we and many other countries cope with an influx of people seeking refuge is a problem for us all.

The title of his speech is “What is a refugee?”

Sir Richard FAULL KNZM, BMedSc, MB, ChB, PhD, DSc, FRSNZ

Sir Richard Faull is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland.

During his 45 years at the University, he has established an international reputation for his research studies on the normal and diseased human brain (Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and epilepsy) and with the generous support of families, has established an international leading Human Brain Bank to promote worldwide research on human brain diseases. His research group has revolutionised our knowledge of the human brain by showing that contrary to dogma, stem cells are still present in the adult human brain and have the potential to make new brain cells and repair the brain throughout life.

His conributions to research on the human brain have been recognized by his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (1998) and he was awarded: the Liley Medal by the Health Research Council of New Zealand in 2005; New Zealand’s highest scientific award, the Rutherford Medal, in 2007 by the Royal Society of New Zealand for outstanding contributions in science; and, received the Supreme Award in the 2010 World Class New Zealand Awards.

In 2012 he was appointed Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland and awarded a knighthood by the Queen in 2016 for his contributions to brain research. 

Pete Morgan, who farms 265 hectares in the Waikato with his wife Ann, is one of a new generation of farmers who are passionate about spearheading a proactive and tech-friendly approach to the changing agricultural landscape. Nominated as an Agri Star by UBCO, Pete integrates GPS tracking, climate-modelling and data analysis with cutting edge “field tech” such as virtual fencing systems and electric utility bikes.

Pete envisions the future of farming anchored in sustainability and meeting the evolving demands of climate change and societal

Professor Thorne completed a PhD at the University of Auckland, followed by post-doctoral studies at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute, University of Michigan. He is a leading auditory neuroscientist with research interests focussed on mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment of inner ear diseases and clinical and population health approaches to prevention and alleviation of hearing loss.

Professor Thorne’s work has been cited over 5000 times and he has held senior management positions at the University of Auckland, where he led the establishment of the Section of Audiology and the Master of Audiology degree programme. He is currently the Director of the Eisdell Moore Centre and co-lead of the Aotearoa Brain Project.

Professor Thorne also contributes substantially to the hearing-impaired community, serving as the President of the National Foundation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and was one of the lead advocates for the establishment of Newborn Hearing Screening through Project Hearing Impairment and Early Detection and Intervention (HIEDI).

 In 2009, he was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to audiology and auditory neuroscience.