Professor Warwick Murray (born 1972) is a New Zealand human geographer and Latin Americanist. He graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1993 (BSocSci, jt.hons), and gained his PhD from the same institution in 1997. He has held academic posts at the University of the South Pacific, and Brunel University (UK). He is currently Professor of human geography and development studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Director of Geography.
He has won awards for his teaching including a New Zealand National Tertiary Teaching Award for Sustained Excellence (2006) and the New Zealand Geographical Society President's Award for Teaching Excellence (2007). In the latter year he won a Victoria University Research Excellence award.
As a researcher he has published approximately 80 books, articles, or chapters in the fields of development and economic geography, focusing especially on Chile and Latin America, as well as the Pacific Islands. He is a commentator on national television and radio on Latin American affairs. He is author of the textbook "Geographies of Globalization" (Routledge, 2006). He was Editor-in-Chief of Asia Pacific Viewpoint, a journal in development geography, from 2002 to 2010, and is Founding Director of the Victoria Institute for Links with Latin America (2007-).
He is also known for singing and playing original songs in class about academic material (see Guardian article below) and is an active musician, singing and playing guitar, banjo and blues harmonica in various bands in New Zealand and overseas including The Brew (blues/rock) and Los Villanos (cuban) based in Wellington, the Blues Machine (blues/swing/jazz) based in Chile, and the Sultana Brothers (rock and roll/blues) based in the United Kingdom.
[1] Academic homepage [2] Publications [3] Guardian, UK, article 'The Singing Professor' [4] Interview on NZ TV One on teaching methods [5] Warwick Murray's Blues Machine Channel [6] The Brew homepage [7] Warwick's original music page