Lincoln University’s inaugural Ross Fellow arrives on campus

Lincoln University’s inaugural Ross Fellow, Professor Emeritus Murray Fulton from the University of Saskatchewan, has arrived on campus for a three-month residence with the Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce.

Professor Fulton arrived in mid-February, in time to join the mihi whakatau for new students and staff.

“It was a wonderful ceremony, and for outsiders such as myself, it made me feel both welcome and integrated with the university community. That was a very important and appreciated aspect of it.”

Professor Fulton’s arrival follows the University’s establishment of an appropriate ‘living memorial’ to Emeritus Professor Bruce Ross CNZM, Lincoln University’s first Vice-Chancellor and, through earlier terms as Principal, one of its longest-serving heads in modern times. 

The Fellowship carries the Ross name, which refers to both Bruce, who died in 2023, and wife Gillian (nee Wilkie). The couple had made a joint endowment to the Lincoln University Foundation and the Fellowship concept for its use was approved by Bruce before his death.

Emeritus Professor Ross was an economist of international stature, who had worked for the OECD for a period and was a Distinguished Fellow of the New Zealand Association of Economists. Following his Lincoln University years he was appointed New Zealand’s Director-General of Agriculture.

The Ross Fellowships will bring internationally renowned scholars to Lincoln University for a residency to teach and research in areas with relevance to agribusiness and economics. The Fellows become Adjunct Professors of Lincoln University.

Professor Fulton’s fields of scholarly expertise are agricultural policy, agricultural co-operatives and industrial organisation.

At the University of Saskatchewan, he was most recently on the staff of Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. Before that, Professor Fulton was in the Agricultural Economics faculty.

While at Lincoln, Professor Fulton will work within the Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce, interacting with its Dean Professor Hugh Bigsby, Professor Alan Renwick and Professor Wanlin Ma, and with the Centre for Transformative Agribusiness. During this time, Professor Fulton hopes to collaborate with Lincoln staff on a course on Indigenous economic development exploring and filling in similarities between a North American First Nations model and the context faced in Aotearoa New Zealand. He will also work on co-operatives and agricultural policy and deliver seminars on the political economy of agricultural policy and changes in policy over the last 200 years.

Professor Fulton’s academic background includes degrees from the University of Saskatchewan (BSA in Agricultural Economics), Oxford University (BA, MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics), Texas A & M University (MS in Agricultural Economics) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD in Agriculture and Resource Economics).

“That’s a rather eclectic mix of universities,” he says, “but each has contributed in its own way to my life’s work.”

Professor Fulton has won awards for outstanding graduate teaching and distinguished graduate supervision and holds a lifetime Fellowship in the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.

A Rhodes Scholarship, awarded in 1978 while at the University of Saskatchewan, took him to Oxford University where he studied at Exeter College.

“Recreationally at Oxford, I played ice hockey and occasionally rugby, but mostly I concentrated on rowing and had the privilege of crewing for a very successful Exeter College First VIII.”

Today, outside of academia, Professor Fulton enjoys kayaking and cycling. He is also a board member of an organisation that provides housing and care services for people with intellectual disabilities.