Dr Neil Vallelly, of the humanities department, has been awarded a Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
The fellowships provide funding to outstanding PhD graduates to undertake two years of postdoctoral research in New Zealand.
Fellows receive an annual stipend of $75,000 and $10,000 to put towards research costs.
Dr Vallelly will use his fellowship to examine the relationship between contemporary capitalism — often referred to as neoliberalism — and the rise of migrant detention, especially of asylum seekers, during the past four decades.
‘‘It examines a paradox at the heart of our age, where capitalism depends on a borderless world of free movement, globalised markets, and free trade, and yet at the same time, borders have become the sites of unimaginable suffering, where millions of refugees and asylum seekers are trapped and detained,’’ he said.
New Zealand was not immune to that problem, and human rights non-governmental organisations and journalists had criticised the detention of asylum seekers here, who were often placed in prisons alongside criminal offenders and held in detention for long periods, he said.
Dr Vallelly aimed to show the detention of migrants at borders was deeply implicated in the history of neoliberalism.
He believed there was an urgent need to examine the issue.
Originally from Ireland, Dr Vallelly arrived at Otago on a Commonwealth PhD Scholarship in 2012, completing it in English Literature in 2015.
He was one of five fellowship recipients nationwide this year.
