'Dr Bogan' graduates from New Zealand university

A NEW Zealand researcher graduated from college today after spending five years and $NZ100,000 of taxpayers' money studying what it means to be a "bogan", stuff.co.nz said.

The term 'Bogan' is popular in New Zealand and Australia and is sometimes used as a term of derision directed at males considered to be uncultured.

Dave Snell - a self-confessed bogan himself - said that a bogan was a person who likes heavy metal music, who wears jeans and band T-shirts and who thinks of himself as being close to the "working class".

Snell made headlines in 2007 when the news broke that he received the $NZ100,000 taxpayer-funded scholarship to study the "everyday bogan's identity and community amongst heavy metal fans".

His study was duly completed, and he graduated today from the University of Waikato in Hamilton, northern New Zealand.

Snell posted a message on his Twitter page thanking people for congratulating him on his graduation. "Thanks for the congratulations. A great deal. The Dean even gave me the Metal horns as I came up on stage," it read.

He said he had enjoyed a strong response to his research.

"Physical appearance is obviously an important factor, a key way they express themselves, but actually, like everyone else, they behave differently in different groups," he told stuff.co.nz "I wear formal clothes at work, and then I go home and put on my Slayer T-shirt and Iron Maiden shorts, for example."