9 July 2010 Two new Lincoln University professors

Two senior staff members at New Zealand’s specialist land-based university, Lincoln University, Dr Tim Clough and Dr John Fairweather, have been appointed professors in their respective fields.

Dr Clough, of the Department of Soil and Physical Sciences, moves from Associate Professor to full Professor in Soil Science and Dr Fairweather, of the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit (AERU), moves from Principal Research Sociologist to Professor of Rural Sociology.
 
Professor John Fairweather has been a staff member since 1984. His new appointment is believed to be the first New Zealand professorship in rural sociology in New Zealand. It is also the first time an AERU staff member has been promoted to professor within the unit. (Two other AERU professors, the Director, Professor Caroline Saunders, and Deputy Director, Professor Paul Dalziel, won their promotions as members of the Commerce Faculty.)

Professor Fairweather’s research work centres on land and society. This includes study of innovation, development of research methods, and documenting the social aspects of agriculture and farming systems. The author and co-author of over 100 research reports and 50 journal articles, he is deeply involved in the management of a current study of the social, economic and environmental effects of different management systems in the sheep/beef, dairy, high country and kiwifruit sectors for the Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS). He is also Programme Leader for the TUI (Technology Users’ Innovation) research project, identifying conditions under which socio-technical networks best foster technology development, adoption and commercialisation, and contribute to improved innovation outcomes and innovation governance in New Zealand.

Professor Fairweather was born in Dunedin but has lived his adult life in Canterbury. He holds an agricultural science degree from Lincoln University and a PhD from the University of Missouri. He represented New Zealand and Canterbury in men’s basketball for many years.

Professor Tim Clough (right) was appointed as a Senior Lecturer at Lincoln University in 2007 and was a research officer at the University prior to this. His research areas include nitrous oxide in agricultural systems, greenhouse gas emissions from soils, stable isotope science and methodology, biogeochemistry and environmental science. He was born in Christchurch, attended Cashmere High School, and completed an agricultural science honours degree and PhD at Lincoln University. His doctoral research, carried out while working for MAFResearch (now AgResearch), concerned the fate of nitrogen from animal urine in agricultural soils.

From MAF, Professor Clough returned to Lincoln University initially as a Marsden Fellow in 1997 investigating the enigma of 15N stable isotope balances in agricultural soil studies.

Further work followed, with Landcare scientists, on the effects of soil management on nitrous oxide emissions from soils.

He was then awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to study at the University of California, Davis, where he worked on the dynamics of nitrous oxide below the soil surface.

Interaction with US scientists led to an appointment as Technical Editor of the Journal of Environmental Quality. He is also an Associate Editor of the Soil Science Society of America Journal and an Associate Editor for the NZ Journal of Agricultural Research.

He has served on the Fulbright-MORST selection panel for graduate students, which involved the selection of New Zealand’s elite science students to study in the USA.

International collaborations have included work with colleagues at The Queen’s University, Belfast, the University of Rhode Island, and the Institute of Grasslands and Environmental Research, Devon, UK. Currently he is participating in a nitrous oxide trial with scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Professor Clough’s teaching work ranges from 100-level classes to PhD supervision.