GCLS Adjunct Senior Fellow Dr Peter Low receives the 2020 John Dunmore Medal

The Fédération des Alliances Françaises de Nouvelle-Zélande granted the award of the John Dunmore Medal for 2020 to Dr Peter Low, Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies.

Through his research and publications, Dr Low has made a valuable and diverse contribution to knowledge of French language and culture in the Pacific and beyond.

His main field has been language and literature, especially poetry.

But he has also developed other areas of scholarly research: the French presence in the Pacific, French Art-Song, and Translation Studies.

His book Translating Song: Lyrics and Texts and co-authorship of a bilingual edition of the writing of Evariste Parny, an eighteenth-century poet from La Réunion, are substantial projects he has recently completed and which have been highly commended by international scholars.

The John Dunmore Medal is awarded annually in recognition of a major contribution to knowledge and understanding of the part played by the French people or the French language in the development of historical, intellectual, scientific, economic or other aspects of world culture, preference being given, although not exclusively, to the Pacific region.