Professor Nigel Roberts, Wellington, ONZM
For services to education. Professor Roberts recently retired from Victoria University, where he has worked since 1981. Before that, he taught at the University of Canterbury for 11 years. He is widely published in his specialist areas, comparative politics and political sociology. Since 1987 he has been Television New Zealand’s election-night commentator. He was an official political science advisor to the 1992 and 1993 Electoral Reform Panels and a member of the New Zealand Political Change Project, which investigated the consequences of New Zealand’s switch to proportional representation, from 1995 to 2003. Professor Roberts is a keen photographer and mountain climber. He took the first official photographs of the wreckage of Air New Zealand Flight 901 on Mount Erebus in 1979, while working as an Information Officer in Antarctica. Professor Roberts' most recent publications include ‘The Baubles of Office: The New Zealand Election of 2005’ and ‘Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008’, which he co-edited with Dr Stephen Levine.