New Zealand historian to take up leading role at Oxford University

A prominent New Zealand historian has been appointed to one of the top jobs in the world in his field.

Professor James Belich will take up the Beit Professorship of Commonwealth and Imperial History at Oxford University in the United Kingdom in October this year.

He is currently Professor of History at Victoria University’s Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.

 The Beit Professorship provides research leadership in Commonwealth, imperial and global history and is awarded to a historian of exceptional and international reputation.

The position was established in 1905 and Professor Belich will be the seventh historian to hold it.

Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh says the appointment is testimony to Professor Belich’s position as one of the world’s leading scholars in New Zealand and, increasingly, global history.

“The appointment is richly deserved and is evidence that New Zealand history and perspectives are being taken seriously in a global context.”

In addition to being one of New Zealand’s most renowned historians Professor Belich is a prize-winning author whose most recent book, Replenishing the Earth, has received critical acclaim around the world. The book explores the movement that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and the British West, made up of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Professor Belich says the appointment is an honour and will allow him to take his research interests, which he describes as ‘increasingly global’ to a wider canvass.

 As one of Oxford’s most senior historians, Professor Belich will also play a leading role in moving the discipline ahead.

One of his goals is to establish a Centre for Global History at Oxford University. “Global history is at an interesting point. It has to shake itself free of the assumption that it’s a history of Western civilisation.”

Born in Wellington, Professor Belich gained both a Bachelor and Master of Arts from Victoria. As a Rhodes Scholar, he went on to Oxford University and graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in 1981.

His book The New Zealand Wars won the Trevor Reese Memorial Prize for historical scholarship in 1987 and was later turned into a major television documentary series. Other internationally acclaimed works include his two-volume history of New Zealand - Making Peoples and Paradise Reforged.

Replenishing the Earth, which has just been published in paperback, has drawn praise from some of the world’s leading historians. That includes Professor Denis Judd, Professor Emeritus of History at London Metropolitan University, who describes it as “a superb work of history” and Professor Bernard Porter, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who says “this is one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years”.