Dr Jacob Edmond, a poetry scholar and senior lecturer in the University of Otago English department, has become the latest recipient of the university's Carl Smith Medal and Rowheath Trust Award.
The award and medal recognise outstanding research performance of early-career staff at the university and are accompanied by a $5000 grant for personal scholarly development.
Dr Edmond was "really delighted" to gain the award, but said it also reflected the strong collegial support which he had felt "incredibly grateful" for since joining the Otago department in 2004.
Born in Wellington, Dr Edmond has several degrees from Auckland University, and a PhD in comparative literature.
At Otago, he has developed an international reputation as a leading scholar in comparative literature and global culture.
Otago University deputy vice-chancellor, research and enterprise, Prof Richard Blaikie said Dr Edmond was an "exceptional scholar".
Dr Edmond's research expertise includes 20th- and 21st-century poetry in English, Chinese and Russian, modernism and postmodernism, the avant-garde, and comparative literature.
He has long been studying languages, including Russian, and he said a year he had spent attending high school in the Czech Republic in the mid-1990s, on an AFS exchange programme, had proved influential.
And he has also long been interested in breaking down barriers, not only between languages, countries and cultures, but also between arts and science, as the first non-scientist to convene the university's O-Zone group of early to mid-career researchers.
He is co-founder and former convener of the Russian studies research cluster at Otago, and is also a convener of the university's new research themes on comparative and cross-cultural studies and on Asian migrations.
