Category Archives: Lectures

2026 Geoscience Lecture Tour

Do New Zealand’s active faults and volcanoes talk to each other? Insights from 25 years of trenching ancient faults

Pilar Villamor

7.30 pm Tuesday, 17 March, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

Held jointly with Geoscience Society of New Zealand

This year’s Geoscience Tour lecture will review 25 years of trenching active faults in volcanic environments and how scientists’ perspectives on tectonics close to volcanoes changed through that time, from the simple utilisation of volcanic stratigraphy as timelines for paleo- earthquake history to a realisation that volcanic and tectonic processes are so intimately connected that one cannot be understood without the other. Pilar will show paleoseismic evidence based on criteria that she developed to distinguish types of earthquake-eruption associations. Paleoseismic data, combined with geomorphology, borehole data, and geophysics, revealed strong temporal links between fault ruptures and volcanic eruptions. She will also draw on worldwide historic examples and stress modelling to infer possible crustal processes that can explain these time associations. Collectively, these studies improve our understanding of how volcanic eruptions and unrest are linked to active faults and earthquakes in the TVZ.

Pilar Villamor is an internationally respected earthquake geologist and principal scientist whose research on active faults and volcano-tectonic interactions in Aotearoa New Zealand has had a transformative impact on our understanding of natural hazards.

MRI in Multiple Sclerosis: A personal history

Graeme Bydder

7.30 pm Tuesday, 17 February 2026, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

Professor Graeme Bydder, CNZM, FMedSci, received his physics training at the University of Canterbury and his medical training at the University of Otago. For much of the early history of clinical MRI, he was the pre-eminent radiologist in the field. The systematic interpretation of MR images which began with his paper on the brain in 1982 is used worldwide. The ultra high contrast sequences developed at Mātai by Drs Mark and Graeme Bydder appear destined to substantially expand the range of applications of MRI and provide unequivocal diagnoses in diseases affecting the brain where previously this has not been possible.

All warmly welcome!

Digital Platforms, Democracy, and Marginalization: A Culture-Centered Approach

Mohan Dutta

7.30 pm Tuesday, 18 November, Palmerston North Central Library, George Street, Palmerston North

As digital platforms increasingly shape public discourse, they simultaneously serve as engines of disinformation and exclusion—particularly for marginalized communities. Algorithmic echo chambers and targeted hate speech reinforce structural inequities and incite real-world violence. I advocate for transformative communication strategies that dismantle disinformation networks, democratize platform ownership, and reclaim democracy as a space of cultural resistance against neoliberal and authoritarian regimes.

Mohan J. Dutta is Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication and Director of the Centre for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) at Massey University, New Zealand. Through collaborations with indigenous, migrant, working class and hyper-precarious communities, Dutta co-creates participatory communication strategies that resist colonial extractivism and algorithmic repression.

The talk will be proceeded by the Royal Society Te Apārangi Manawatū Branch 2025 AGM, starting at 7.00pm.