From Empire’s Servant to Global Citizen: A History of Massey University

Professor Michael Belgrave joined Massey University in 1993 on the opening of the university's Albany campus. A historian and previously a research manager at the Waitangi Tribunal, he taught in the social policy and social work programme until 2014, as well as Maori studies and history. In 1995 he began a long involvement with social workers and schools, managing and evaluating Massey University's pilot of the programme, and becoming the leading advisor and evaluator in the development of a government pilot and in the generalisation of the programme throughout New Zealand. The programme is now provided to all decile 1-3 schools. He continued to maintain a strong interest in Treaty of Waitangi research and settlements, providing substantial research reports into a wide number of the Waitangi Tribunal's district inquiries. More recently, he has been heavily involved in assisting iwi in negotiating the historical aspects of Treaty settlements. He has published widely on Treaty and Maori history, including being lead editor of Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi (Oxford University Press). He received a Marsden Fund award in 2015 for study into the re-examination of the causes of the New Zealand wars of the 1860s.

The vision of two young scientists, Massey University was established in 1928 to bring science to New Zealand's role as Britain's farm. Massey has since become New Zealand's national and a global university, with almost 140,000 alumni spread across 140 different nations. This candid history looks at the university as it weathered war, funding crises, risk-taking expansion and conflict with the government's plans for New Zealand's tertiary sector. Written by distinguished historian Professor Michael Belgrave, this is a lively look at how an agricultural college grew up to become a leading intellectual centre of excellence.