Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley was Massey University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences until 2019. He retired from Massey University in 2021.
In 2022, the Prime Minister appointed him the Co-Director of He Whenua Taurikura (National Centre for Countering Violent Extremism). He is the author or editor of 29 books, including The “New” New Zealand: Facing Demographic Disruption (2021) and Histories of Hate: The Radical Right in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2022). The recipient of multiple awards and honours, Paul has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, awarded the Science and Technology Medal by the Royal Society, was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of California Berkeley and is a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany. He is also a Fellow and Board Member of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.