Inaugural Lecture: Professor Daniel Exeter

Date: 6 June 2024

Title: The quest for spatial justice: lessons from the bleeding edge

In his inaugural lecture, Dan shared how he uses a geospatial lens to identify and investigate inequities in health and social outcomes, and reflected on some of the successes and key learnings he has had along the way. This lecture demonstrated how his passion for Geographical Information Science and Big Data, together with a commitment to social justice, underpins his research which has included the development of the New Zealand Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), a set of tools for identifying areas of privilege and of deprivation in New Zealand.

Dan is a health geographer/spatial epidemiologist who was born and raised in Glendene, West Auckland before his family moved to Mt Albert when he was 11. He has a BA and MA(Hons) majoring in Geography from the University of Auckland. He then decided it was time to broaden his academic thinking and went to St Andrew’s University for his doctoral studies (and yes he was there when Prince William was there, but more about that in the inaugural lecture) so he has a PhD in Geographic Health Inequalities from St Andrews, (Scotland, UK).

Based at the School of Population Health, Dan has taught health inequities content to first year Population Health students since his appointment as a Lecturer in 2006, before he extended his teaching to include other courses and in other faculties. Dan is driven by challenging social norms and his research is at the nexus of geography, epidemiology, public health and statistics. Dan has been the recipient of funding from the Auckland Medical Research Foundation, the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Royal Society Te Apārangi. This funding enabled him to lead the development of the New Zealand Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and the Older Persons' Index of Multiple Deprivation (OPIMD), the first whole-of-population deprivation measure for the population aged ≥65 years. In 2018 his team won the NZ Spatial Excellence Award for People and Communities for the IMD. He is currently the Academic Director for the School of Population Health.