So when the highly respected, semi-retired University of Otago chair of anthropology let it slip that he was fully retiring at the end of this year, his former students and colleagues got together to create a Festschrift in recognition of the four decades of research he put into the human history of the Western Pacific islands, especially Papua New Guinea and its offshore islands.
A Festschrift is a book produced in honour of a respected academic.
However, he said it was "more than just a book".
"The thing about a Festschrift is that your students and colleagues have to get together to work on it.
"Each chapter is written by one of my students or colleagues, about research that I impacted on."
He said the volume, titled Forty Years in the South Seas, was edited by three of his former students — University of Otago anthropology Associate Prof Anne Ford, Australian National University research fellow Ben Shaw and University of Oxford palaeolithic archaeologist Dr Dylan Gaffney.
"The three of them got together in secret without me knowing about it, and got authors from around the world to put together a 430-odd page book with chapters all connecting me to their research.
"They [Festschrifts] are very rare and you don’t really see many of them."
He was particularly pleased about a "beautiful chapter" in the book, from his colleagues in Papua New Guinea, about the impact he had on their work.
The volume also held connections to research he did before he came to Otago 20 years ago, when he was a researcher at Australian National University and when he worked in the field for the Australian government.
"It means a lot to me. I was very surprised. I didn’t expect it and nor did I want one.
"You do your research, you get your students through, and you have your team behind you.
"But when I saw the effort they went to — there are people there from Oxford, Cambridge, Hawaii, all around the world that contributed — I thought this was very nice, very touching."
He was also pleased the book was free to download online, so that people in the Pacific Islands could get free copies.
