Mele Taumoepeau

Email: mele(dot)taumoepeau(at)vuw(dot)ac(dot)nz

Dr Mele Taumoepeau is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University Wellington (VUW), New Zealand. She has a BA in Psychology and Linguistics from VUW, and she received her BSc(hons) in Speech Pathology and Therapy from Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, Scotland. She worked as a speech pathologist for several years before completing her PhD in Developmental Psychology, at the University of Otago, where she also completed her post-doctoral research examining parental socialisation of mental state language in Pacific families living in New Zealand.

Broadly, Dr Taumoepeau’s research is concerned with the role of caregiver-child communicative interactions in the development of their children’s social cognition, with a particular focus on how culture informs development. She is particularly interested in caregivers’ use of mental state language and how variation in use is informed by cultural imperatives.

She has published widely in these areas and her research has been funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the Health Research Council of New Zealand