School of Humanities

I teach literary studies (especially Shakespeare) and (at graduate level) creative writing.

My research involves analysis of the ways in which the natural world is represented in culture and literature.  My scholarly books include Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature (Routledge 2025), Sheep (Reaktion 2016), A New Zealand Book of Beasts: Animals in our Culture, History and Everyday Life (co-authored with Annie Potts and Deidre Brown, Auckland University Press 2013), What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (Routledge 2008), Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis (Routledge 2001), and Shakespeare's Visual Regime (Palgrave 2000).

My creative work, which includes poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, has been published in a range of journals and anthologies in Aotearoa, Australia, the UK, and the USA. I have published two collections of poetry: Sinking Lessons (Otago University Press 2020), which won the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry in 2019, and Touch Screen (Otago University Press 2025). "Tenuous Grounds", a piece on the Canterbury earthquakes, won the 2011 Landfall Essay Prize.

I grew up on a farm in the backblocks of Wairoa, Hawkes Bay.

My qualifications include:

• A BSc in Biology from the University of Canterbury
• A Diploma in Computer Scuience from the University oF Auckland
• An MSc in Philosophy from the University of Canterbury
• A PhD in Philosophy from the University of Arizona

The areas of philosophy that I write and research on include:

• The Philosophy of Mind (especially consciosunes and intentionality)
• Epistemology (especially the problem of induction)
• Metaphysics (especially the idea that the world is built of primarily of facts and only secondarily of things)
• The Philosophy of Biology, with a focus on the evolution of human altruism
• The Philosphy of De-extinction

I teach into courses on:

• Critical Thinking (PHIL110 and ARTS102)
• The Philosophy of Science (SCIE101 and PHIL203/303)
• The Philosphy of Technology (PHIL235/335)

My personal research website with preprints of my articles is here:

http://douglascampbellphilosophy.blogspot.co.nz

Jack Copeland FRS NZ is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he is Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing.

Jack began life as a physicist and his philosophical research is mostly science-facing, including research in mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics; Artificial Intelligence; cognitive science; philosophy of mind; the philosophy and foundations of computing; and the history of science, engineering and digital technology. Much of his work is collaborative and transdisciplinary.

Jack has received various prizes and honors for his research work, including the American Philosophical Association’s Jon Barwise Prize (2017), the citation for which describes him as “the world-wide expert on Alan Turing and a leading philosopher of AI, computing and information”, and the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Aronui Medal (2020) “for research into the foundations, philosophy and history of computing”. In 2017 he was admitted to the United States IT History Society Honor Roll, described by the Society as “a listing of a select few that have made an out-of-the-ordinary contribution to the information industry”. The citation for his IACAP Covey Award (2016) recognizes his “substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy”. In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, on the basis of his research and scholarship. Jack received the University of Canterbury Research Medal in 2009. The citation said "Professor Copeland's work is considered remarkable not only for its success but also its breadth. His research ... has brought enormous prestige to the University of Canterbury."

Jack has also won a number of teaching awards at UC, including the Student Choice Great Character Award (2023), UCSA Lecturer of the Year Award (2010), Top Lecturer in the College of Arts (2010), and Best Lecturer in the Faculty of Science (2002).

Jack has been script advisor, co-writer, and scientific consultant for a number of scientific documentaries. One of these, the BBC’s Code-Breakers, directed by Julian Carey, won two UK BAFTA awards and was listed as one of the year’s three best historical documentaries at the Media Impact Awards in New York City (2013). The Man Who Cracked the Nazi Codes, based on Jack’s Oxford University Press biography Turing, and directed by Denis van Waerebeke, won the Best Documentary prize at the FIGRA European film festival (2015) and has been shown widely on TV networks around the world, including ARTE (who commissioned it) and the History Channel. Jack’s large permanent exhibitions at Bletchley Park, Alan Turing’s Papers (opened 2012) and Hitler’s “Unbreakable” Cipher Machine (opened 2013), both co-curated with Gillian Mason, have been viewed by millions of visitors.

Jack's international visiting professorships include the Royden B. Davis Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA, the John Findlay Visiting Professorship of Philosophy at Boston University, Boston, USA, Visiting Professor of Information Science at Det Informations-videnskabelige Akademi, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Renmin University of China, Beijing, China, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Akita University, Akita, Japan, and most recently Visiting Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Plaksha University, Mohali, India. He has been a regular Gastprofessor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, since 2013 (where he co-founded the Turing Centre and co-directed it until 2020). He is also Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Research Fellowships include Senior Fellow in the History of Science and Technology in the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Mass., USA; Visiting Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, England; and most recently Visiting Fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg, RWTH, Aachen, Germany, and Visiting Fellow at the Centre Leo Apostel for transdisciplinary research, Vrije University, Brussels, Belgium.

Jack is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a member of the American Philosophical Association (APA), a member of the New Zealand AI Researchers Association, and a founding member of the American Association for Philosophy and Computing.

At Canterbury/Aotearoa I mostly explore the nature of the American nation. My research interest includes the intellectual history of the early American republic, American statesmanship and the presidency. For years, I have taught versions of Great Books courses in the Humanities. 

My current research focuses on artist-led publishing practices. I am working on a history of Artist's Books in Aotearoa, and have an interest in eco-materialities within the field of contemporary art publishing.

My research looks at horror media and storytelling. I ask questions about how horror, across a wide range of media, can explore the relationships between bodies, materiality, space, subjectivity, monstrosity and affect in new and curious ways. I am very interested in new approaches to form and medium, and how new media forms open up new ways of telling and experiencing stories. I employ philosophical, aesthetic and theoretical approaches to analysis, and have expertise in feminist and queer philosophies of embodiment. I connect these interests across diverse areas in film, visual and creative media, always with an eye to industry, authorship, spectatorship, expression, and transnational flows. 

I am an award-winning teacher. I am very interested in alternative pedagogies and assessment models, including creative approaches such as zine-making and in-class gaming sessions. I am active in skills development and sharing.

I am very involved in the arts community. I am a prolific arts and cultural critic with particular expertise in media and the performing arts, and I currently edit the popular arts criticism blog Flat City Field Notes. I contribute cultural and media criticism to The Conversation and other media outlets. I was described as "the most influential theatre reviewer in the South Island" in The Press' 2026 power list. I appear regularly as a panellist, speaker, commentator and adjudicator. I am proud to sit on the board of trustees of books and ideas festival WORD Christchurch. I also coordinate the long-running Univeristy of Canterbury / Creative NZ Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence programme, which brings the best Aotearoa New Zealand writers to UC. 

I am Programme Coordinator for the Cultural Studies programme, an interdisciplinary programme that brings together courses from across the Faculty of Arts. I also act as the point of contact for the Gender and Sexuality Studies minor, and the BA specialisation in Creative Industries and Contemporary Practice. Please get in touch if you would like to know more about study options in these areas. 

I am very happy to be contacted about school / outreach visits or speaking engagements.

I am not taking on any additional thesis supervisions (MA and PhD) in 2026 as my supervision load is at capacity.

Tēnā koe e te whānau

I teach Creative Writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels at UC and actively explore the unique teaching and learning practices of the creative writing space in my academic inquiry.  I have been exploring the experiences of neurodivergent creative writing students most recently, as well as away-from-classroom creative practice and provocation.

As a second generation Greek kiwi I am particularly interested in 'third culture' and 'third space' ideas as they relate to creativity and art-making, and I am particularly interested in

-the generative and radical empathy capacities of the creative process

-the materiality of the creative artefact, or text, and its ‘mattering’ in space

-the participatory, affective and anti-hierarchical nature of creative exchange

I approach creative practice as play and inquiry, and in my own mahi I have especially been interested in the lyric subjective and elegy, the epic collective and myth-making, hybrid and experimental forms, translanguage and literary translation.

 My work has been published in literary journals and anthologies in Aotearoa, Australia, US, Italy and Greece, and I have published two collections of hybrid poetry, edited two chapbook anthologies of poetry, and translated contemporary Greek poetry into [New Zealand] English in Aotearoa. The Greek translation of my most recent book 'The Grief Almanac: A Sequel' is forthcoming from Monocle Athens.

Selected Publications

-                                          Landfall                                       

-                                          Landfall

• 'Seeing the Feedback for the Words: Reflecting on Feedback for Neurodivergent Students' (2025). In McCormack, L (Ed.), Evolving Strategies for Writing Feedback on Creative Manuscripts: A Multi-Genre Pedagogy Guide. Routledge.
• 'When you land in Te Whanganui-a-Tara' (2025) In Elvy, M. & Piahana-Wong, K. (Eds.), Poto | Short, Massey University Press.
• ‘Παράδοση | Surrender’ (2025) In Elvy, M. & Rapatahana, V (Eds.), He Moana o Reo | An Ocean of Languages, The Cuba Press.
• 'Medicine' (2024) In Fleming, J, Wilkinson, J (Eds.), Rabbit 39: Mutiny. RMIT Melbourne.
• ‘If we give up flying it doesn’t mean we can’t speak to each other as if countries or scan our genomic sequences for travel to the flats’ (2023) In Elvy, M & Ihimaera, W (Eds.), A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha, Massey University Press.
• 'Hybrid', 'Extinction', 'Stomach' (2022) in Slaughter, T. (Ed.) Poetry NZ Yearbook 2022. Massey University Press.
• ‘Υπάρχουν αρνητικές μορφές ευτυχίας’ (2021). In Sonzogni, M & Smith, T (Eds.), More Favourable Waters: Aotearoa Poets Respond to Dante’s Purgatory. The Cuba Press.
• ‘Στρώματα αήττητων σωμάτων’ (2020) trans. Kallergi, L. In Iliopoulou, K (Ed.), Diaspora. Φάρμακο
• 'Having a few beers with my mate' (2020) in Chris Tse (Ed.) The Friday Poem. The Spinoff.
• Manasiadis, V. (2019) The Grief Almanac: A Sequel. Wellington, New Zealand. Seraph Press.
• ‘A Hook for a Tale’ (2019) In Green, P (Ed.), Wild Honey: Reading New Zealand Women’s Poetry. Massey University Press.
• Manasiadis, V. & Rakuraku, M (2018) Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation. Seraph Press.
• 'Lexicon found inbetween', 'The sharing of atoms is the nature of things', 'Endnotes', 'Study. Of spaces and of filling them', 'Blueprint for an essay on Houses' (2017) in Tierney, O. (Ed.), Jacket2, University of Pennsyvania 
• Manasiadis, V. (2016) Ναυάγια/Καταφύγια: Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six contemporary Greek Poets. Seraph Press.
• ‘Hectic Hector’ (2014) In Harvey, S., Norcliffe, N & Ricketts, H (Eds.), Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page. Random House.
• Manasiadis, V. (2009) Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima. Seraph Press.

For me, the most important question is "what kind of life should one live?" This question lies behind all my teaching and research projects. My university teaching has included health science, bioethics, data ethics, legal ethics, environmental ethics, political philosophy, criminal justice and computer game design. My research areas relate to ethics, particularly applied ethics and public policy, and reasons for action, with outputs relating to people’s relationship with the environment, artificial reproductive technology, de-extinction (recreating extinct species), the provision of health care, reasons for action, and friendship. I have been fortunate to contribute to Aotearoa New Zeland by being appointed as an ethicist or Chair on a number of ethics committees, including the Upper South Island Health and Disability Ethics Committee and the Ethics Committee for Artificial Reproductive Technology. 

Paul Millar is a Professor of English Literature and Digital Humanities in the School of Humanities. His research interests include the literature of Aotearoa New Zealand, Life Writing, and Cultural Heritage Digital Archiving. His literary biography of novelist and cultural commentator Bill Pearson was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards. He is currently writing the biography of influential poet, philanthropist and editor, Charles Brasch.  Millar has been involved in Digital Humanities projects and research since 1996. In 2001 he co-founded Victoria University of Wellington’s New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, and at UC he led the establishment of New Zealand's first Digital Humanities teaching programme. Following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes he founded the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive (www.ceismic.org.nz), a cultural heritage database that collects stories, images and media about the earthquakes' impacts for the purposes of commemoration, teaching and research. His recent Marsden-funded project, ‘Kōrero mai. Tell us your earthquake story’ was a longitudinal study of post-disaster narratives to better understand how retellings of dramatic experience years later crystallize narrative structure, provide multi-faceted perspectives of people’s experiences of recovery, and reveal more of how narratives of traumatic events change over time. Millar was president of the Australasian Association of Digital Humanities (aaDH) and co-director of the UC Arts Digital Lab.

My research focuses on propaganda and patriotism in First World War Britain. My first book examined domestic propaganda in Britain from 1917 aimed at maintaining civilian morale. It focused on the ways propagandists interpreted patriotism. Patriotism was a 'purposive language' used to persuade others of the validity or necessity of an action. Understanding this shows the significance of different themes within wider discussion, and highlights less heavily-discussed, but more rhetorically crucial, elements of narratives. Alongside the book, I have published several articles on related themes and topics, addressing propaganda content towards soldiers and women; the significance of performed rituals and participation in public propaganda; the importance of making patriotic acts tangible and achievable for civilians; the ways in which 'expert' knowledge of Germany created over-simplified analysis of German propaganda and ideas; and a re-evaluation of wartime censorship.

My most recent book is an ‘A to Z’ of British First World War propaganda, published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Propaganda remains a thoroughly misunderstood area of First World War history. The book offers an introductory overview of propaganda’s operations and themes that helps non-specialists to understand the topic more clearly. The book brings together the latest scholarship on the topic with extensive examples of original propaganda materials and discussion of under-explored elements of Britain's propaganda efforts.

I have also explored connections between British propaganda and the Armenian Genocide. My article on the subject discussed the transnational network of humanitarian activists who collaborated on a parliamentary report on the Genocide, arguing for the importance of mutually reinforcing actions by different participants and suggesting the event was a point of transition of presumed leadership of the 'civilised' world from Britain to the United States. The extent of this transition is an area of growing research interest for me, with a recent article considering a British charitable work in support of Belgium as an example of Britain appealing to 'world opinion', and particularly to the US, in partial recognition that Britain was not strong enough to direct world affairs alone.