Psychology thesis topics and supervisors , Ngā Kaupapa ā-tuhinga roa me ngā kaiarataki

This page lists staff who have current capacity for research supervision within the School of Psychology. Staff and their research interests are listed by campus.

Auckland campus supervisors

Stuart Carr

My focus in EPIC and I/O psychology is on the links between decent work conditions and sustainable livelihoods under the support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable Livelihoods include humanitarian work psychology and eco-social protection under SDGs 8 and 13. If you feel that research has a role in meeting the SDGs, contact me for a chat before the end of 2023.

Visit EPIC to learn about projects GLOW, SAFE and SLATE

Stuart Carr's staff profile including research expertise

Shemana Cassim

I am happy to supervise students interested in psychological research of migrant communities. My areas of expertise include working with migrant communities of colour or ethnic migrants and Muslim migrant communities. I am primarily a qualitative researcher.

Shemana Cassim’s staff profile and research expertise

Richard Fletcher

I am primarily interested in quantitative research, although I am more and more encouraging a mixed methods approach. Areas of interest are psychometrics, sport psychology, and wellbeing in informal carers.

I am open to discussions around most subjects as a research methodologist.

Richard Fletcher’s staff profile and research expertise

Darrin Hodgetts

I am a societal and community psychologist with interests in the social determinants of health including urban poverty, homelessness, decent work, and food insecurity.
I am involved in a range of applied community and policy projects exploring issues such as urban poverty, social inclusion, and change.

Darrin Hodgetts' staff profile including research expertise

Veronica Hopner

I am happy to supervise students interested in the intersections of psychology with security studies, human security psychology and counter-terrorism. I am also interested in topics around sustainable livelihoods and occupational health psychology.

The topics I focus on are:

• modern slavery
• right-wing extremism and women
• left-wing extremism
• misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories
• sustainable livelihoods
• occupational health psychology

I am primarily a qualitative researcher.

Veronica Hopner's staff profile including research expertise

Julia Ioane

I am interested in supervising honours, master and doctoral students, primarily in the areas of:

• Pasifika communities, particularly in the justice sector
• child offending
• youth and adult offending
• diverse worldviews of psychology
• trauma
• intersectionality between psychology and law
• child and youth mental health
• psychological interventions and evaluations (in partnerships with agencies and government departments).

Julie Ioane’s staff profile and research expertise

Heather Kempton

I do not have the capacity for additional postgraduate supervision in 2024.

I supervise research in the area of mindfulness, meditation and spirituality. I have both quantitative and qualitative interests in the topic.

I’m close to capacity in terms of supervision, but I may be able to supervise students who already have experience in mindfulness, Buddhist philosophy, or other spiritual topics. For example, I have previously supervised a student looking at Kundalini awakenings.

Heather Kempton's staff profile including research expertise

Michelle Lee

I'm able to take on students who are interested in topics related to industrial and organisational psychology from a macro perspective. My areas are organisational culture, organisational climate and leadership style, particularly in an Asian setting. I've conducted research on:

• hierarchical culture
• psychosocial safety climates
• safety and team climates
• transformational, transactional, ethical, toxic and paternalistic leadership, specifically the job demands-resources model and employee work outcomes.

My approach is mostly quantitative and multilevel, where we collect pockets of data from groups or organisations. I'm also interested in researching new norms of work during and after the pandemic, and identity and retirement transitions.

While most of my studies are in an Asian setting, I welcome cross-cultural studies on those topics, involving employees in New Zealand and overseas.

Michelle’ Lee’s staff profile and research expertise

Kathryn McGuigan

My research interests focus on critical health psychology, including:

• health and space
• understandings and use of medication
• the social construction of food
• gendered experiences of health and illness
• disability
• neurodivergence.

I am primarily interested in qualitative projects.

I do not have any more capacity for students for 2025.

Kathryn McGuigan's staff profile and research expertise

Pikihuia Pomare

I am not available for supervision in 2023.

Pikihuia Pomare's staff profile and research expertise

Matthew Shepherd

Kia ora. I am looking to supervise honours, master's and doctoral students in research around:

• tamariki and rangatahi (child and adolescent) mental health
• computerised therapies
• the application of clinical psychology practice
• child and adolescent therapies
• family therapy.

Matthew Shepherd’s staff profile and research expertise

Minh Nguyen

My preferred topics are below.

My field of interest is Industrial and Organisational Psychology with a focus on sustainable development. I am available to supervise honours, master's, and doctoral students in research on the following topics:

• Decent work
• Workplace well-being
• Workplace spirituality
• Organizational commitment
• Leadership
• Social enterprises
• Sustainable livelihoods
• Culture, ecosystem.

I am happy with both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Minh Nguyen’s staff profile and research expertise

Clifford Van Ommen

I am not accepting any further projects for supervision for 2025 but am open to discussing relevant projects (as described below) for 2026.

I would be happy to discuss supervising research projects that utilise any of a number of qualitative methods (including, but not limited to, discourse analysis, thematic analysis, and mapping).

I am open to discuss supervising projects focussing on issues related to critical health psychology. This can include a range of foci including psychiatry, clinical psychology, neuropsychology, migrant and refugee experience, and the history of psychology.

In particular, I would be keen to supervise students whose projects focus on issues related to housing, especially renting. I am currently focussing on a project entitled ‘Our home/their property: The renter’s life project’. This project aims to document and theorise the social practices and power relations that shape tenant-landlord relationships, including mapping their intergenerational consequences materially, socially, and psychologically.

Dr Matt Williams and I are looking to supervise a doctorate level student, comfortable with quantitative methods, interested in exploring the relationship between renting and mental health.

Clifford Van Ommen's staff profile and research expertise

Matt Williams

My main research interests are:

1. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. For example, what drives people to believe and spread misinformation? Why do people change their minds about conspiracy theories?
2. Metapsychology and methodology. For example, how often do researchers make action recommendations not warranted by their findings? How can we better estimate the prevalence of rare beliefs and behaviours?

Most of my research is quantitative, and I am a strong supporter of open science practices (for example, preregistration, open data, open materials). I lead the Reproducible Psychology at Albany lab, where students can network in a supportive environment.

Whenever possible, I prefer to work with students who have successfully completed courses 175303, The Practice of Psychological Research and 175746, Psychological Research: Quantitative Data Analysis, or equivalent courses from other institutions.

Matt Williams' staff profile and research expertise.

Manawatū campus supervisors

Professor Fiona Alpass

Combining work and caregiving: the impact on health and wealth over time.

Older workers, including:

• flexible work opportunities and job satisfaction
• attitudes, motivations and workability
• senior entrepreneurs.

Fiona Alpass's staff profile and research expertise

Don Baken

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Don Baken’s staff profile and research expertise

Corinne Bareham-Waldock

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Corinne Bareham-Waldock's staff profile and research expertise

Sharon Crooks

I am interested in hearing from students (including ND students) interested in qualitative research pertaining to the ordinary experiences of ND (esp. ASD, AuDHD, ADHD) in the following contexts, or with respect to the following additional diagnoses:

• Educational (primary, secondary, or tertiary), workplace, or religious (Catholic/Christian)
• Interpersonal relationships (e.g. motherhood, peers, marriage)
• Health (esp. EDS, PCOS, PMDD, burnout, suicide ideation) and wellbeing (e.g. self-care)

Limited capacity for 2025.

Sharon Crooks' staff profile and research expertise

Leigh Coombes

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Rosie Gibson

I support quantitative or qualitative research projects in the fields of ageing, sleep health, and sleep and society. I am actively involved with Massey’s Health Work and Retirement study as well as other programmes of research where there may be opportunities for student theses.

Topics I am focusing on are:

• Predictors, outcomes and experiences of sleep disturbance across the lifespan
• Sleep among people with cognitive impairment or dementia
• Sleep of informal carers
• Non-pharmacological interventions for ageing well
• Experiences, practices and sociology of sleep and dreaming
• Discourses of sleep in the media

Students may also consider contacting supervisors at Massey’s Sleep/Wake Research Centre for other sleep-related topics.

Rosie Gibson's staff profile and research expertise

Ross Hebden

I am available to supervise projects that fall somewhere within the bounds of the following areas: social media, communications technologies, marketing, and drinking cultures. Alternatively I would be interested in projects that involve some facet of analogue gaming (e.g. board gaming and tabletop gaming).

Ross Hebden’s staff profile and research expertise

Stephen Hill

I have a broad interest in the ways in which people rely on their environments when they remember, reason, and make decisions. My current research examines ‘hot topics’ such as conspiracies, disinformation, urban myths, climate change beliefs, and the influence of semantic context on juror decision making. I’m particularly interested in people’s metacognitive judgements about their own knowledge – particularly in the cognitive biases (such as illusions of knowledge) and implicit assumptions that underpin these judgements. I’m also interested in metascience and the open science, and the teaching of psychology at secondary school level.

I have a couple of almost-ready-to-go projects available for research students, particularly at honours or master's level. Some of our work is lab-based on the Manawatū campus but there are opportunities to do studies in other ways if you are based elsewhere.

Stephen Hill’s staff profile and research expertise

Christine Kenney

I specialise in qualitative research and supervise or co-supervise PhD and master's students primarily in the School of Psychology and the Joint Centre for Disaster Research.

Topics of interest include:

• kaupapa Māori or Māori-centred research in disasters, sustainability and resilience
• indigenous peoples and disasters
• sociology of disasters
• disasters and public health
• gender and disasters
• humanitarian concerns, human rights and disasters.

Christine Kenney's staff profile and research expertise

Pita King

My background is in community and indigenous psychologies, analytic philosophy, and I maintain a research focus on issues of urban poverty, Indigenous gift economies and social practices, social inequalities, indigenous philosophies and psychologies, coloniality, and theoretical psychology. I am primarily a qualitative orientated researcher, keen to support applied research projects based within or around the Manawatū area.

Pita King’s staff profile and expertise

Ute Kreplin

Unavailable for new supervision in 2024.

Ute Kreplin's staff profile and research expertise

Nicole Lindsay

Unavailable for new supervision in 2024.

Nicole Lindsay's staff profile and research expertise

Mandy Morgan

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Mandy Morgan's staff profile and research expertise

Tracy Morison

I do not have the capacity for additional postgraduate supervision in 2024.

My main research area is sexual and reproductive health, spanning the areas of feminist, critical and health psychology. I use qualitative research methods to investigate the socio-cultural context of sexual and reproductive relationships, practices and decisions. I'm especially interested in how people's different social identities (for example, gender, ethnicity/race, class, etc.) affect how they can have relationships, make decisions and act in ways related to sexuality and reproduction. The main goal of my work is to identify and address problems at the social and structural levels (rather than the individual or interpersonal) to support sexual and reproductive rights and justice.

Regarding methodology, my expertise is in qualitative methodologies.

• Theories: feminist and other critical theories. For example, Sexual and Reproductive Justice theory, decolonial feminism, feminist post-structuralism, Foucauldian theory, and social constructionism.
• Data generation: standard qualitative methods (for example, interviews, focus groups, media/texts), online data collection methods, for example, qualitative surveys, story completion, digital narratives, and online ethnography.
• Data analysis: reflective thematic analysis, discourse analysis, critical discursive psychology, narrative discursive analysis

The types of topics I supervise include, but not are not limited to:

• Reproductive decision-making: contraception and abortion, voluntary childlessness/childfree identities, male involvement in these areas
• Sexual and reproductive health: including contraception, abortion, pregnancy, menstrual health and inequity (for example, period poverty)
• Youth sexuality: 'teenage'/young pregnancy and parenthood, sexuality education, negotiating sex/consent, engagement with sexually explicit material/Pornography
• Healthcare and healthcare interactions: Sexual and Reproductive Health services and person-centred care, health service delivery and policy for marginalised groups, especially LGBTQ/'rainbow' people
• Heterosexuality: negotiating sex/consent, casual sex/'hookups'.

My work is focused on physical health (as detailed above). I am not able to supervise topics related to mental health issues, including eating disorders or sexology.

Tracy Morison's staff profile and research expertise

Anja Roemer

I am not available for new research supervision in 2024.

I am interested in understanding what drives behaviour and thinking at work and how we can use this knowledge to foster wellbeing. My research mostly applies theories, approaches and constructs from positive psychology, such as mindfulness and psychological capital, but is not limited to these. I am interested in supervising surveys as well as experimental studies. I am happy to discuss suitable topics with interested students.

Kirsty Ross

Unavailable for new supervision in 2024.

Kirsty Ross's staff profile and research expertise

Christine Stephens

1. Quantitative topics using existing large data sets which include large samples of Māori.
   1. Housing, inequalities, and health among older people.
   2. Neighbourhood qualities and wellbeing of older people.
   3. I am happy to discuss other topics around the physical or mental health of older people.
2. Qualitative
   1. Participatory research with older people about neighbourhood needs.
   2. The use of menstrual apps at perimenopause.

Natasha Tassell-Matamua

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Natasha Tassell-Matamua's staff profile and research expertise

Jo Taylor

As a clinical psychologist, my research programme focuses on clinical and applied psychology. I am developing a new platform of research on lived experience involvement in clinical psychology training that focuses on recovery-oriented and lived experience-led teaching. I supervise quantitative research, and doctoral research involving qualitative methodology is co-supervised with staff with the requisite expertise. I continue to do a small amount of research in my existing platform of driving anxiety, as part of an HRC-funded longitudinal investigation of older drivers, out-of-home mobility, and predictors and impacts of driving cessation on older people and their whānau, based at the University of Otago.

Jo Taylor's staff profile and research expertise

Hukarere Valentine

Unavailable for new supervision in 2024.

Wellington campus supervisors

Julia Becker

I am interested in supervising student projects on issues around natural hazards and society. Subject areas may include:

• perceptions of natural hazards
• preparedness for emergencies
• community resilience, response and recovery for events
• natural hazard warnings.

Focuses may be cross-peril and include earthquakes, flooding, coastal issues, volcanoes and landslides.

Elliot Bell

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025

Elliot Bell's staff profile and research expertise

Simon Bennett

Unavailable for new supervision in 2023.

Eleanor Brittain

I am available for supervision in 2024 and happy to supervise qualitative projects related to my expertise. My research has centred on issues of significance to Māori, including:

• Māori psychological experiences, healing and wellbeing
• wairua and spirituality
• racism in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I have practice in kaupapa Māori theory and research, as well as qualitative methodologies, namely narrative inquiry and discursive psychology. I am also a clinical psychologist, with an interest in lived experience and mental health recovery research.

Eleanor Brittain's staff profile and research expertise

Emma Hudson-Doyle

Unavailable for new supervision in 2023.

Dianne Gardner

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Dianne Gardner's staff profile and research expertise

David Johnston

Unavailable for new supervision in 2023.

Kealagh Robinson

Unavailable for new supervision in 2025.

Kealagh Robinson’s staff profile and research expertise

Raj Prasanna

I would like to hear from potential master's and PhD students who are interested in conducting research on:

• disaster management information systems
• application of internet of things (IoT) for disaster management
• the use of big data and deep learning to enhance disaster management situation awareness and decision-making
• designing human-computer interaction (HCI) for emergency response
• situation awareness and cognitive requirements capturing techniques for emergencies.

Raj Prasanna’s staff profile and research expertise

Sarah Riley

I have a research opportunity for a Māori student who is interested in exploring wāhine Māori/takatāpui experiences of using menstruation (period/ovulation/fertility) tracking apps.

I have very limited availability for students who want to use qualitative methods to explore:

• menstruation/period/fertility/ovulation tracking apps
• digital resources to manage menopause
• relationships between bodies, digital technologies and identities
• drug and alcohol harm reduction in specific sites such as festivals.

Sarah Riley's staff profile and research expertise

Ilana Seager van Dyk

I am passionate about mentoring emerging scholars in our field using a junior colleague model. I am interested in supervising quantitative post-graduate research on topics related to my research expertise in Rainbow/LGBTQ+ mental health, affective science, child and adolescent psychology, parenting and families, and experimental and longitudinal methods.

Projects might include:

• experimental studies investigating how individuals regulate their emotions in different contexts
• survey-based studies examining the mental health needs of Rainbow/LGBTQ+ young people in a given community
• parent-child dyadic interaction tasks investigating how emotions are regulated interpersonally
• ecological momentary assessment studies that investigate Rainbow/LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of minority stress and their coping strategies over time
• measurement development studies that create and validate new questionnaires for assessing constructs related to emotion regulation or minority stress in Rainbow/LGBTQ+ populations.

Find out more on my website or in my staff profile including my research expertise.

Ian de Terte

Unavailable for new supervision in 2024.

Ian de Terte's staff profile and research expertise.