Left to right: Professor Rochelle Stewart-Withers, Professor Jo Taylor, Professor Mandia Mentis (middle), Professor Kirsty Ross and Professor Kelly Dombroski.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas commended the academics on their outstanding achievements.
"Congratulations to our new Professors and Associate Professors. Your dedication to research, teaching, and community impact exemplifies the values of excellence and innovation we hold dear. Each of you brings a unique perspective and a wealth of expertise that strengthens our university’s global reputation and enriches the lives of those we serve. These promotions not only enhance our academic community but also inspire future generations of scholars and innovators."
Te Kura Pūkenga Tangata College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor Kelly Dombroski
Professor Kelly Dombroski is an award-winning researcher and educator specialising in feminist economic geography and community and diverse economies. Her research focuses on social, environmental and economic change, with more than 70 publications including books, journal articles and reports. Notable books include Caring for Life, The Handbook of Diverse Economies, and Introducing Human Geographies. She was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2021. Professor Dombroski has collaborated extensively with community partners on projects related to urban commons, organic waste management and earthquake recovery. She is currently researching the relationship between individual changes in subjectivity and collective action for economic transitions.
In teaching, Professor Dombroski has led online, hybrid and face-to-face learning design, earning a Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Canterbury in 2020. Her commitment to incorporating te ao Māori and innovative teaching methods has empowered students from diverse backgrounds. She has supervised 11 PhD and eight master’s completions, with six current PhD students under her guidance. Professor Dombroski holds leadership roles within the New Zealand Geographic Society and the Community Economies Institute. She joined Massey in July 2022 and resides in Palmerston North with her husband and four children. She also maintains a popular blog with a decade's worth of resources on working in academia in New Zealand.
Professor Mandia Mentis
Professor Mandia Mentis is committed to advancing equity through education in her teaching, research and professional practice. As an educational psychologist and teacher, she has worked across primary, secondary and tertiary levels both in New Zealand and internationally, focusing on educational diversity, inclusion and innovation.
She is the Director of the Specialist Teaching Programme, the only qualification for resource teachers in New Zealand, covering nine areas of disability and neurodiversity. This professional programme involves developing and sustaining partnerships with national stakeholders including Kotuku Reo, Blind and Low Vision Education NZ, Te Kōhanga Reo, special schools and resource teacher clusters.
Professor Mentis established and directs the Learning Support Network, a national expertise hub across Aotearoa for educators supporting learners with diverse and complex needs. She was the founding Co-Director of the Equity through Education Research Centre and is a co-editor of the Kairaranga journal. Currently, she is the Associate Head of the Institute of Education.
Professor Kirsty Ross
Professor Kirsty Ross is the Acting Head of the School of Psychology. She is a registered clinical psychologist who works with young people and families. Her clinical career spans more than two decades, specialising in anxiety and trauma, particularly adverse childhood experiences and complex trauma. For the past 18 years, Professor Ross has seen clients at the Massey Psychology Clinic on the Manawatū campus, supporting children, young people and whānau facing long-term/terminal health conditions, particularly cancer. She has a long-standing association with the Child Cancer Foundation and led a nationwide project to train counsellors and therapists in New Zealand, creating a network of therapists to work with children with cancer and their families.
Professor Ross teaches within the clinical psychology programme and advocates for recovery-focused approaches to mental distress, informed by her own lived experience. Her clinical work and personal experiences guide her teaching and research, which centre on a developmental and family systems perspective, centred around a holistic view of wellbeing.
Professor Ross works with individual clients, families, organisations and professionals across various disciplines to enhance existing strengths, prevent serious mental distress and illness and foster mental health, wellbeing and resilience.
Professor Rochelle Stewart-Withers
Professor Rochelle Stewart-Withers, Ngāti Rāhiri Hapū o Te Ātiawa, is an Indigenous feminist scholar who explores how sport can achieve development goals and promote social justice. She is recognised as a world-class scholar who is breaking new ground and bringing an Indigenous understanding to the field of sport for development. She is on the Chair’s Advisory Committee for the UNESCO ‘Sport for Development, Peace and the Environment’.
Professor Stewart-Withers has made significant contributions to academia, serving as chair and acting director of the Ethics Committee, convenor of PhD oral exams and chairing qualification reviews. She is a licenced mentor supervisor and has facilitated supervision mentoring circles since their inception. In 2017, she won the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CoHSS) Supervisor Award, for her work with Pacific students and for securing scholarships. She is the current head of the programme for the Institute of Development Studies. She holds one of the CoHSS Kaiārahi Te Tiriti positions.
Professor Stewart-Withers has secured almost $2.5 million dollars in research funding, including Marsden grants and a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant.
Before academia, she worked as a Registered Nurse for 16 years and was part of the mental health senior leadership team at MidCentral Health. She recently stepped down from the Board of the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation, which she served on since 2011, most recently as Deputy Chair of the Board.
Professor Joanne Taylor
Professor Joanne (Jo) Taylor was born and raised in Whanganui. As a Pākehā and tangata Tiriti, alongside her Māori colleagues, she has co-led the Clinical Psychology Programme’s enactment of its responsibilities under Te Tiriti o Waitangi through leadership roles including Director of Clinical Psychology Training 2021-2023. She led the Doctor of Clinical Psychology and Master of Clinical Psychology, both accredited programmes with the New Zealand Psychologists Board.
Professor Taylor is committed to training clinical psychologists who are responsive to Te Tiriti and models this in her teaching and clinical practice. Reflection on her own training and teaching has resulted in leadership of innovations in clinical psychology training, including recovery-oriented and lived experience-led teaching, in partnership with lived experience academics. These innovations position training at the forefront of the discipline nationally and internationally and are critical in the current mental health climate.
Her research focuses on lived experience involvement in clinical psychology training. Professor Taylor is an internationally recognised expert on driving anxiety, and her research has informed clinical practice. She received the CoHSS Individual Researcher Award in 2015 and contributed to the Health and Ageing Research Team who won the Research Team University Medal in 2012. Her work has influenced international policy on psychotherapy practice and recognition of the value of lived experience teaching in the training of clinical psychologists. Professor Taylor’s work is the result of collaboration with scholars, practitioners, and colleagues.
Te Kura Hauora Tangata College of Health
Left to right: Professor Darryl Cochrane, Professor Riz Firestone and Professor Sunia Foliaki.
Professor Darryl Cochrane
Professor Darryl Cochrane combines practitioner expertise with academic leadership to advance human performance through innovative approaches. Ranked in the top two per cent of 27,700 researchers in sports science, placing him among the global elite, he is internationally recognised for his pioneering research on vibration exercise. His research has led to its widespread use in clinics and fitness settings worldwide, improving physical function and enhancing quality of life for individuals managing health conditions, while also enhancing athletic performance.
Professor Cochrane’s research bridges academia and industry, with collaborations across Spain, Brazil, France, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. He has led the development of innovative wearable vibration technology, receiving national and international recognition for advancing performance training and rehabilitation approaches. With more than 100 international peer-reviewed publications, he has secured substantial external funding, including a Health Research Council funding to assess a new non-surgical treatment for anterior cruciate ligament injuries in Māori.
As a practitioner, Professor Cochrane has held high-performance roles with New Zealand Cricket (Black Caps), Hockey New Zealand (Black Sticks) and High Performance Sport New Zealand. He has trained Olympic and international athletes globally, providing evidence-based fitness programmes, injury prevention strategies and athlete workload management.
Tupa’ilevaililigi Professor Ridvan (Riz) Tupai-Firestone
E le sili le ta'i, nai lo le tapua'i - The quest is never greater than the support.
Tupa’ilevaililigi Professor Tupai-Firestone was born in Samoa, with ancestral links to the villages of Falealupu (Savai’i) and Matautu (Falealili). Her family moved to Christchurch, in 1976, where she completed all of her education, including a Bachelor of Speech and Language Therapy at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury. She began her research career in sleep science at the Moe Tika Moe Pai SleepWake Research Centre before moving to public health at the Centre for Public Health Research.
For more than 20 years, her research has focused on identifying collaborative and innovative approaches to improving health outcomes of young Pacific people and communities at risk of developing non-communicable diseases. She uses co-design and community-based participatory research approaches. As part of the work carried out under the Te Patu Kite Rangi Ariki Sir Thomas Davis post-doctoral fellowship, she co-developed the Pacific youth empowerment and co-design programme, which has been widely used across multiple research projects involving Pacific youth, families and communities.
Additionally, Professor Tupai-Firestone has developed a Pacific public health research programme to build the capacity and capability of young and emerging Pacific health researchers and interns. This programme creates a supportive learning environment for Pacific students to develop their career ambitions.
Professor Sunia Foliaki
Professor Sunia Foliaki hails from the Tongan villages of Ha'afeva and Kanokupolu. He embodies the resilience and ingenuity shaped by the Pacific breeze. A public health physician, Dr Foliaki is passionate about Pacific health research. His work aims to address challenges and drive impactful advancements for Pacific populations.
Dr Foliaki’s research focuses on Pacific people in New Zealand and the Pacific islands. His studies cover public health topics such as the epidemiology of cancer and asthma, as well as non-communicable diseases. He also works closely with Pacific Island nations on food security policies and programmes. In addition, he is involved in conducting health consultancy works with and for Pacific Island Health Ministries on various health issues.
Dr Foliaki is currently leading a mixed-methods study to explore the main factors affecting access to and use of paediatric palliative care among Pacific populations in New Zealand. His findings will build on his recent work developing evidence-based guidelines to improve palliative care for Pacific people. Dr Foliaki is also leading a New Zealand-funded project whose overall goal is to support and develop Tonga’s health workforce to deliver consistent, quality health services and improve health outcomes for Tonga.
Te Wāhanga Pūtaiao College of Sciences
Professor Ruggiero Lovreglio and Professor Ranvir Singh
Professor Ruggiero Lovreglio
Professor Ruggiero Lovreglio is an internationally recognised researcher specialising in human behaviour during disasters and safety training using digital technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI). He is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow and the principal investigator on a current Marsden project. Professor Lovreglio has co-led many innovative research projects, including using GPS data and AI to improve evacuation modelling during wildfires and gamification to enhance wildfire community preparedness.
He has published more than 90 peer-reviewed journal articles and several book chapters. He has received numerous awards, including the Massey Research Medal (Early Career) and the ‘5 under 35’ International Award from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. His research has influenced global policy and standards, with citations in documents from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), World Health Organization and the United Kingdom Government.
Professor Lovreglio serves as an Associate Editor for high impact journals and actively communicates his research through social media platforms. He is involved in multiple international committees and represents New Zealand on the ISO Fire Engineering Committee.
Professor Ranvir Singh
Professor Ranvir Singh is an internationally recognised researcher and educator in the field of environmental hydrology. He focuses on improving water quality by discovering mitigation pathways to reduce the flow of nitrate contamination from agricultural land to waterways. He leads research in measurements and mapping of subsurface nitrate attenuation potential in various hydrogeological settings and development of novel edge-of-field technologies such as controlled drainage, woodchip bioreactors and sediment detainment bunds. He also leads research on agricultural water productivity and footprinting, developing new methods and models for both local and global contexts.
Professor Singh holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Engineering and a Master of Soil and Water Engineering from Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, India, and a PhD in environmental sciences from Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands. He has gained significant experience through his postdoctoral research at Iowa State University, USA, as a research fellow at Western Sydney University, Australia and as an academic at Massey since 2010.
Professor Ranvir Singh has forged strong national and international collaborative partnerships in both his research and teaching. He has led large collaborative projects, including the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Farming Fund’s ‘Innovative Drainage Management Technologies’ and the Ministry for the Environment’s Essential Freshwater Fund’s ‘Catchment Solutions’. He has served on several international expert panels and advisory groups, including the Water Footprint Network, Netherlands and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance Water Technical Advisory Group. He is also a visiting Professor at the Facultad de Ciencias Agronomicas, Universidad de Chile and collaborates with Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, in Punjab (India).
Te Kura Whai Pakihi Massey Business School
Professor David Tappin and Professor Hung Do
Professor David Tappin
Professor David Tappin is a work and organisation scholar, co-director of the MBS Healthy Work Group and a Certified New Zealand Human Factors and Ergonomics Professional. His research focuses on the design and management of work systems to ensure that work is, at a minimum, psychosocially and physically sustainable.
Before joining Massey in 2011, Professor Tappin spent two decades conducting industry-based research in New Zealand. He co-founded a consultancy and later worked at Scion Research, specialising in work systems analysis for primary industries and manufacturing sectors. He believes that understanding the reality of work is essential to changing it and applies a pragmatic paradigm and participatory approach in his research.
Professor Tappin has been involved with five large government funded multi-disciplinary research projects, leading two of them. His research has contributed to the development of codes of practice, policy guidelines and industry resources, as well as academic outputs. His research experience shapes his teaching, research supervision and professional mentoring.
Professor Hung Do
Professor Hung Do’s research focuses on financial risks, their interactions and how this knowledge strengthens financial system stability and resilience. He has worked for major banks in Australia, including Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Professor Do worked at Monash University (Sunway campus) and the University of Technology, Sydney before joining Massey in 2017.
Professor Do has taught corporate finance, risk management and econometrics, earning consistently high evaluation scores, innovation teaching awards and nominations for Lecturer of the Year. He has an impressive record with high-quality publications, impactful research, competitive funding and significant contributions to the community. His portfolio includes 45 papers, including 19 in A* (top-tier Business ABDC ranking) and 26 in A-ranked journals.
Professor Do was awarded the Massey Business School Individual Researcher Award in 2023 and the Early Career Researcher Award in 2019. He has won three best paper awards at major Australasian and Asian conferences. He has chaired three annual international conference series and is the founder of the annual series of Massey Sustainable Finance Conference. Professor Do has been the chief investigator for a number of projects, including those with the Climate Compatible Growth, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Massey Strategic Research Excellence Fund. Currently, he is the Director of the Sustainable Finance Research Cluster and the Director of the Finance and Banking Network – Association of Vietnamese Scientists and Experts (AVSE) Global. He serves as an editor and guest editor for several high-quality journals, including Energy Economics, the International Review of Economics and Finance, the Journal of Forecasting, and the Economic Analysis and Policy.
Promoted to Associate Professor – effective 1 January 2025
Te Kura Hauora Tangata College of Health
Dr Claire Badenhorst
Dr Gretchen Good
Dr Linda Murray
Dr Barry Palmer
Dr Marta Rychert
Te Kura Pūkenga Tangata College of Humanities and Social Science
Dr Karen Ashton
Dr Don Baken
Dr Hona Black
Dr Julia de Bres
Dr Rosie Gibson
Dr Matt Williams
Te Kura Whai Pakihi Massey Business School
Dr Doug Ashwell
Dr Rose Davies
Dr Harvey Nguyen
Dr Trish O’Sullivan
Te Wāhanga Pūtaiao College of Sciences
Dr Mostafa Babaeianjelodar
Dr Fernanda Castillo Alcala
Dr Niluka Domingo
Dr Elena Garnevska
Dr Gillian Gibb
Dr Stuart Hunter
Dr Bo Liu
Dr Carl Mesarich
Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts
Mr Stuart Foster
Dr Scott Wilson