life members

On occasion, the Population Association of New Zealand awards life membership to individuals who are highly regarded experts in their field, and who have made a significant contribution to the social science of demography, as well as to national understanding of population related issues.

Current life members
Professor Richard Bedford
Dr Ruth Farmer
Mansoor Khawaja
Dr Janet Sceats
Dr Arvind Zodgekar
Len Cook CBE
Emeritus Professor Jacques Poot
Professor Tahu Kukutai
Dr Robert Didham

Former Life members
Professor Ian Pool (1936-2022)
Associate Professor Andrew Trlin (1942-2014)

Professor Richard Bedford has a huge national and international reputation in the area of population studies, through his research on population movement, especially international migration.

Throughout all of his academic career, spanning almost 40 years, Richard has been a loyal member of the New Zealand Demographic Association (now the Population Association of New Zealand), serving as a Councillor for almost two decades, and as President in the mid-1980s. Richard’s significant contribution to research and policy development has already been recognised in a number of ways, including the Companion of the Queen’s Service Order in 2008. It is our honour to recognise his achievements and we welcome Richard as a Life Member.

Dr Ruth Farmer has made a substantial contribution to the increased understanding and appreciation of population, and particularly international migration and refugee issues, in New Zealand.

She played an important role in the development of both the Population Studies Centre at the University of Waikato and the New Zealand Demographic Society and strove to enhance the practical application of demographic knowledge in population policy-making in New Zealand. Dr Farmer spent 30 years teaching at the University of Waikato before taking up the position of Co-ordinator/Director of the Bromley Refugee Network in the United Kingdom in January 2000.

During her time at the University of Waikato she advocated a broadly based population studies curriculum and in 1973, she initiated and wrote a proposal to establish a Demography Centre at the university. This eventually led to the establishment of the Population Studies Centre. She then became an active participant in the Centre’s teaching, research and conference related activities. She was elected a foundation Council member of the New Zealand Demographic Society and was heavily involved from the outset in the Society’s deliberations about population policy issues. Dr Farmer became the Society’s third President in 1978.

Dr Farmer’s prominence in the field of population research is most obvious in the field of international migration. She developed an undergraduate and graduate programme in migration studies at the University of Waikato. It was the first department to teach migration in a comprehensive way. Ruth furthered her interest in population policy issues through the New Zealand Planning Council’s Population Monitoring Group and in many other activities in New Zealand and in international collaborations. Dr Farmer’s research was at the forefront of New Zealand academic research on refugees and refugee settlement in the 1980s.

Mansoor was Chief Demographer at Statistics New Zealand for many years. He was a foundation member of the original New Zealand Demographic Society in 1975, and from the beginning was actively involved in its activities.

He was on the Council of the Society for over 25 years and was President between 1987 and 1989. He has only recently stood down in 2010. Mansoor has been indispensable behind the scenes of PANZ conferences and no doubt his expertise will be called on in future years. He has been a leader in the provision of statistics that inform public debate about population issues and is a lively, engaging presenter. We wish him well in all his future endeavours.

Dr Sceats pioneered several important areas of research in medical demography and family formation in New Zealand. Her wide-ranging career in academia, the health sector, and private consultancy reflects her lifelong passion for undertaking research at the intersection of demography and health policy. In addition to her work in medical demography, Dr Sceats has had a long interest in family formation. She was one of the first demographers to examine, in detail, family dynamics in New Zealand including induced abortion, and changes in birth timing and spacing.

From the late 1970s until her retirement in 2009, Dr Sceats occupied senior advisory, research and management roles in the health sector. Her long list of roles included positions with the Canada Department of National Health and Welfare (1970s), the New Zealand Department of Health (1970s), the Waikato Area Health Board (1980s), the Midland Health Funding Authority (1990s), and Pinnacle Primary Health Network (2000s). After establishing her own consultancy in the late 1990s, Dr Sceats continued to provide expert advice and research to clients including the Ministry of Health, Health Waikato Ltd, local government and iwi authorities.

During her term as PANZ President (1990-1992), Dr Sceats was instrumental in ‘modernizing’ the association, not only effecting a name change from the New Zealand Demographic Society to its current moniker, but also instigating the association’s flagship journal, the New Zealand Population Review. In several of her roles she was able to train and mentor a cadre of aspiring women demographers and health policy analysts, several of whom are now senior demographers in their own right.

For 35 years between 1973 and 2007 Dr Arvind Zodgekar taught demography and research methods within the Sociology and Social Policy Programme at Victoria University of Wellington.

During that time he imbued thousands of students and dozens of staff with the excitement and relevance of demography. Much of the understanding and appreciation of population matters that is present throughout New Zealand in local and national government, and in private enterprise, results from his teaching. Through his research on populations in India, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand he gave extensive coverage to the key aspects of demography, fertility and mortality, and most recently to immigration.

Arvind also served as a member of the Executive Council of the New Zealand Demographic Society since its inception in 1975 (now the Population Association of New Zealand, or PANZ) and was President for three years between 1997 and 2000 as well as a co-editor for five years of the New Zealand Population Review. In 2006 he was made a Life Member of PANZ in recognition of his contribution to the research, teaching and promotion of demography in New Zealand.

Leonard Warren Cook is a professional statistician who was Government Statistician of New Zealand from 1992 to 2000 and National Statistician and Director of the Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom, and Registrar General for England and Wales from 2000 to 2005.

Len was elected a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society in 1973 and a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2005. He served as one of three vice-presidents of the International Statistical Institute from 2005 to 2007 and is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was made a CBE in June 2005. He has been president of the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand since 2009.

After joining the Department of Statistics, New Zealand, (now Statistics New Zealand) in 1971, he was appointed as Assistant Government Statistician in 1982, Deputy Government Statistician in 1986 and Government Statistician in 1992. He was a member of the secretariat of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Tax Reform in 1981/82 and a member of the Royal Commission on Social Policy in New Zealand in 1987/88.

Len has a particular interest in social policy, demography, statistical methodology and the application of information technology in statistical systems. He is interested in the promotion of research methodology in public policy analysis and decision-making with past interests particularly in retirement provision and taxation policies. He is also an associate of the Child Poverty Action Group, where he promotes his strong belief in social justice.

Len has been a strong supporter of PANZ from its early beginnings and has been a member of the PANZ Council.

Jacques Poot is Emeritus Professor of Population Economics at the University of Waikato, and is an internationally recognised scholar in population economics, regional science, migration, and meta-analysis. Jacques has an outstanding academic profile, is ranked in the top ten economists in New Zealand (by RePEc) and has a Google Scholar H-Index of 48.

Jacques received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU University) in the 1970s, and a doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington in 1984. After many years on the faculty of Victoria University (1979-2003), Jacques moved to the University of Waikato in 2004 to become Director of the Population Studies Centre, a role which he held until 2010. Jacques was named New Zealand Economist of the Year in 2013. He holds several international appointments and fellowships, including being an elected corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected member of the Academia Europaea and a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Spatial Economics at VU University Amsterdam, and an External Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at University College London and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany.

Jacques’ research has had a profound effect on the understanding of population issues internationally and in New Zealand. His models of international migration and the New Zealand economy radically changed how the impact of immigration is evaluated, and subsequently impacted immigration economics and policy in New Zealand. His research integrated assessment of demand, trade, labour market, growth, and fiscal effects of demographic changes.

Jacques has also been a longstanding member of the Population Association of New Zealand since 1979, including serving as Treasurer from 1980-1984.

Tahu Kukutai FRSNZ is a New Zealand sociology academic of Ngāti Tīpā, Ngāti Mahanga, Ngāti Kinohaku, Ngāti Ngawaero and Te Aupōuri descent, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. In 2022 Kukutai was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Tahu received her PhD from Stanford University in 2010. Her research focuses on Maori demography and Indigenous data sovereignty. She has several decades of experience working with hapu and iwi, doing demographic research that meets their needs. She is also heavily involved in Indigenous data sovereignty research and advocacy and is a founding member of the Maori Data Sovereignty network Te Mana Raraunga and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance.

She has a long-standing interest in ethnic classification and identity and has published widely on these topics. With Professor Victor Thompson (Rider University, USA), Tahu undertook the Ethnicity Counts? project which examines how governments around the world count and classify populations by ethnicity and citizenship status.

In addition to research and supervision, she serves on a wide range of iwi, research and government advisory groups including the Puhoro Charitable Trust which governs the Puhoro STEMM Academy, the Chief Science Advisor Forum, and the technical advisory for the Data lwi Leadership Group, National lwi Chairs Forum.

Tahu was on the PANZ Council for 10 years from 2012 to 2022 and was in the Vice President role for much of that time.

Robert Didham is an internationally recognised and prominent researcher in the field of population studies. He is a prolific author on topics such as ethnicity, migration, identity and migration. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 papers. His interests include history, Asian languages and Buddhism, He reads, speaks and writes numerous languages especially those with their roots in Sanskrit.

Robert has seven degrees including two PhDs and reads around 60 different languages. Robert has worked at Stats NZ for over 30 years and is a well-respected colleague, expert, mentor and authoritative voice to all who work with him. Robert is also an affiliate researcher at Te Ngira (formerly NIDEA) at the University of Waikato, where he has enriched teaching and research through his ongoing collaboration with researchers, providing guest lectures and technical support to graduate students.

A long-standing member of the Population Association of New Zealand, Robert is a stalwart supporter of the New Zealand Population Review both as a contributor and supportive peer reviewer.

For over 25 years, Ian Pool continually challenged and lifted the place of demographic work in academic and public life in New Zealand.

His extraordinary vitality, the depth of his international engagement, and his powerful insights into demographic processes in all facets of the New Zealand population are well recognised, through his prodigious publication, his passion for the teaching of population, and his accessibility and willingness to engage in the many ways expected of leaders in New Zealand.

Ian Pool was well recognised by many distinctions that distinguish our finest scholars, including being elected a fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 1994. He was awarded its James Cook Fellowship for 2004-06. Ian has been a visiting fellow at overseas universities on many occasions.

He was the founding Director of the University of Waikato Population Studies Centre, leading it from 1980 until 2004. He was twice elected President of the Population Association of New Zealand, and was a member since 1978.

Read Ian Pool’s obituary in NZPR Vol. 48.

Associate Professor Andrew Trlin was very well known in the demographic and migration research community.

His ebullient and forthright manner belied a very careful and thorough scholar whose work has enriched our collective understanding of New Zealand society particularly of what it means to have arrived in New Zealand as an immigrant. Andrew’s impressive output of academic papers, reports and submissions is testimony to a dedication and determination which has been widely appreciated by the population community in both New Zealand and abroad.

Andrew’s interests covered immigration, settlement, demography and race relations, spilling over into health issues including mental health, social work and housing. His impact was not confined to print having taught thousands of undergraduates in both geography and sociology, supervised numerous PhDs, presented at a wide range of conferences both in New Zealand and overseas, and served on several professional bodies and government organisations. To Massey University, where he worked from 1967, he devoted his professional life.

Read Andrew Trlin’s obituary in NZPR Vol. 42.