Robert Chapman (academic)

Robert McDonald Chapman CMG (30 October 1922 – 26 May 2004) was a New Zealand political scientist and historian.

Born in Takapuna, Auckland, on 30 October 1922, Chapman was educated at Auckland Grammar School. He later studied at Auckland Teachers' Training College and Auckland University College, where he received scholarships, and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1947, and Master of Arts with first-class honours in 1949. For his Master's research project in history, he analysed the 1928 New Zealand general election.

In 1948, Chapman married Noeline Amy Thompson, a teacher, and the couple went on to have three children.

Chapman was first appointed to the History Department at the University of Auckland in 1948. He was interested in "New Zealand history as an expression of the nation's social development." According to The New Zealand Herald obituary of Chapman:

"He was one of a pioneer group of teachers at the university—among them historian Sir Keith Sinclair and poet Allen Curnow—who, in the 1960s, proudly asserted that New Zealand had its own history, its own politics, its own literature, which was every bit as important as that of Britain."

Chapman was interested in fields outside political science and history, and was involved in the development of New Zealand literature and poetry. He co-edited, with Jonathan Bennett, An Anthology of New Zealand Verse (1956). His interest in other areas was part of a wider pattern among New Zealand public intellectuals:

"Literary criticism sometimes functioned as cultural criticism for intellectuals whose formal expertise lay in other fields. Robert Chapman’s 1953 Landfall essay "Fiction and the social pattern" charted the ways recent novels had revealed Pākehā social mores – a subject at some remove from Chapman’s research as a lecturer in political science."

Chapman participated in the first television coverage of the New Zealand general election in 1966. He also helped with election coverage in the 1969 and 1972 elections.