Associate Professor Mele Taumoepeau

BA Psychology and Linguistics, BSc (Hons) Speech Pathology and Therapy, PhD Developmental Psychology

Associate Professor Mele Taumoepeau - Victoria University of Wellington

Associate Professor Mele Taumoepeau is an Associate Investigator for the Au – Pacific Child Wellbeing project. Mele taught and did research at the University of Otago for 11 years, before recently taking up a new role at the School of Psychology, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Before completing her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Otago, Mele had trained and practised as a speech and language therapist. Mele’s research interests include pre-schoolers’ socioemotional development, the role of parent-child conversations about mental states in children’s social understanding, cross-cultural differences in parent-child conversations about the mind, and child language development.

What is your vision for Pacific Children?

Research is a powerful tool for better understanding the lives of our Pacific children. My vision for our Pacific children is that they thrive in an environment that values and actively embraces their cultural and linguistic heritages.