At the heart are 7,000 children born in New Zealand.

The Team

The Growing Up in New Zealand team is a multidisciplinary group of researchers led by Dr Susan Morton of the University of Auckland, in collaboration with researchers from Otago, Massey and Victoria universities. The researchers are supported by an operations team who are responsible for enrolling the participants and administering the interviews.

Growing Up in New Zealand Team

  • Dr Susan Morton - Director
  • Bob Bulpin - Executive Director

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    Research Domain and Theme Leaders

    Research Team

    • Dr Susan Morton - Director
    • Dr Polly Atatoa Carr - Associate Director
    • Anita Winn Robertson - Study Administrator
    • Brigid Duffield - Consultant
    • Jo Schmidt - Research Fellow
    • Elizabeth Robinson - Biostatistician Manager
    • Dinusha Bandara - Biostatistician
    • Jatender Mohal - Research Data Manager
    • Mary-Rose Cavanagh - Research Manager

    Operations Team

    Operations Administration Team

    • Peter Tricker - Data and Systems Manager
    • Nick Langstone - Developer
    • Libby Rodrigues - Operations Administration Team Leader
    • Leone Inu - Operations Administration
    • Jane Teofilo - Operations Administration
    • Bonnie Chan - Operations Administration

    Interview Team

    • Linda Hefford - Interview Manager
    • Kim Heathcote - Interview Administration
    • Shiane Van Rooyen - Interview Administration
    • Cherie Lovell - Interview Team Leader
    • Natasha Jones - Interview Team Leader
    • Lesley Savile - Interview Team Leader

    Community Team

    • Monique Davies - Community Team Leader
    • Liz McFarlan - Community Team
    • Hayley Neil - Community Team
    • Lea Cowley - Community Team
    • Louise Were - Community Team

     

    Growing Up in New Zealand Director Biographies

    Dr Susan Morton - Director

    Susan is the principal investigator leading Growing Up in New Zealand ’s multi-disciplinary team of researchers. Susan is an epidemiologist and specialist in public health medicine with a general interest in lifecourse epidemiology, particularly as it pertains to reproductive outcomes (of offspring and mothers), growth throughout the lifecourse and women's adult health.

    Bob Bulpin - Executive Director

    Bob is responsible for all operational aspects of the study and making sure that the establishment phase meets its objectives on time and to budget. Bob has worked in the information technology industry for the last 30 years and has significant experience across a wide variety of roles, technologies and industries. In the past few years, he has worked with UniServices as a supplier of software development services for the award winning asTTle, a literacy and numeracy evaluation tool developed for the Ministry of Education by the University of Auckland.

     Research Team Biographies


    Te Kani Kingi
    Te Kani is Director of Te Mata o te Tau, The Academy for Māori Research and Scholarship at Massey University in Wellington. His role is focused on developing inter-disciplinary research within the University and promoting Māori academic excellence. Te Kani has particular research interests in psychometrics, mental health and Māori development. Te Kani was born and raised in Poroporo, near Whakatane, and attended St Stephen's School in Bombay, South Auckland. He has tribal affiliations to Ngāti Pūkeko and Ngāti Awa.

    Vivienne Ivory

    Vivienne is a social scientist working in the public health field. Her interests include contextual influences on health and child outcomes. She is currently studying for a doctorate examining the relationships between neighbourhood social fragmentation and health, combining epidemiology and social science disciplines. Vivienne has a background in child development, education and policy processes.

    Jan Pryor

    Jan Pryor is the Director of the McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families at Victoria University in Wellington. Her research focus is on family dynamics, and includes family transitions such as separation and divorce, and stepfamily formation. She is co-author of Children in Changing Families. Life After Parental Separation (Blackwell, 2001); and editor of The International Handbook of Stepfamilies. Policy and Practice in Legal, Research and Clinical Environments to be published by John Wiley and Sons in 2008. She is the leader of the family and whanau domain of Growing Up in New Zealand .

    Cameron Grant

    Cameron Grant is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland and a paediatrician at Starship Children’s Hospital. He received his paediatric training at the University of Auckland (where he also earned a PhD), and in the United States at Duke University Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins Hospital and University. His research is focussed in improving health in early childhood.

    Karen Waldie

    Karen E Waldie is a developmental neuropsychologist who received her PhD in 1998 from the University of Calgary, Canada. She worked as a Research Fellow during phase 26 of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Study and is now a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Auckland (2000-present). She teaches child psychology and research methodology and her main research interests include understanding the underlying basis of neurodevelopmental disorders such as dyslexia, ADHD and autism. She has also published extensively in the areas of headache disorders, brain and language, and mental health.

    Elizabeth Peterson

    Elizabeth is a developmental psychologist in the Psychology Department at the University of Auckland, working with Karen Waldie on the psychosocial domain of Growing Up . She specialises in the field of individual differences and most of her research has focused on how individual differences factors (e.g., personality, intelligence, self-efficacy, self-concept and cognitive styles) can affect and predict student learning outcomes. Elizabeth is currently working collaboratively on projects looking at educational expectations and beliefs of parents, teachers and students, the application of cognitive learning styles, and emotional intelligence in NZ secondary school students.

    Elizabeth Robinson

    Elizabeth is a consultant biostatistician in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Studies at the University of Auckland. Her strengths are in the design and analyses of methodologies commonly used in medical research such as sample surveys, cohort studies and case control studies. Elizabeth has brought her expertise to Youth 2000 Adolescent Health Research group, the Auckland Birthweight Collaborative longitudinal study, the Elderly Program grant, the Violence against Women study, the Diabetes Cohort Study, and now Growing Up in New Zealand .

    Elaine Reese

    Associate Professor Elaine Reese is a developmental psychologist who trained at Emory University's Cognition and Development programme and came to New Zealand in 1993 to the Psychology Department at the University of Otago. Her research expertise is on the role of parent-child interactions in children's language, cognitive and literacy development. Her recent intervention work tests the impact on children's development of training caregivers to engage in richer conversations with their children. Her research has been funded by the Marsden Fund, the Foundation for Research in Science and Technology, and the US National Institute of Child Health and Development.

    Lana Perese

    Lana Perese is the Senior Research Analyst at the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs. She is also completing a PhD at The University of Auckland with a focus on contemporary Samoan gambling. She is of Samoan ethnicity and has been involved in a number of research projects on and for Pacific peoples in New Zealand, focusing on the areas of gambling, addictions, health and justice. More recently, she was involved in the developmental phase of Growing Up in New Zealand and continues involvement in the study proper.

    Renee Liang

    Renee Liang is a paediatrician who trained at the University of Auckland and has worked in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. Her area of interest is in community child health and adolescent health. As well as being a doctor, Renee is also involved in the arts community as a poet, playwright and writer where she is known for her cultural commentary. Renee is a NZ-born Chinese and her parents immigrated to New Zealand from Hong Kong.

    Polly Atatoa Carr

    Polly Atatoa-Carr is a public health medicine specialist who was born and raised in Hamilton, and has been working back in the Waikato since 2002. Since this time Polly has worked for the Waikato DHB – in both Te Puna Oranga and at the Population Health Service, for the National Heart Foundation, and for the National Ethics Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Health. Polly is particularly passionate about improving wellbeing for Māori and Pacific communities, and reducing health inequalities.