Kay Saville-Smith — Programme Leader

Dr Kay Saville-Smith MNZM, is a sociologist and director of the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment – CRESA. Kay has undertaken extensive research into housing markets, housing demand, retirement villages, accessible housing, sustainable housing, the residential building industry and neighbourhood built environments. In addition to this current programme she has led a number of public good science funded programmes or components, including: Finding the Best Fit – Housing, Downsizing and Older People in a changing Society – a three year research programme assessing the practicalities of downsizing and the conditions which determine successful transitions; Resilient Communities – Doing Better in Bad Times – a two year programme aimed at helping older people and their communities to be more resilient during adverse natural events and recover better after them; Good Homes – a five-year programme on older people’s repairs and maintenance needs in the context of ageing in place; the Sustainable Neighbourhoods Stream for BEACON Consortium; and the social science component of the Building Energy End-use Study (BEES) undertaken by BRANZ. She is also a trustee for the Marlborough Sustainable Housing Trust.

Dr Ganesh Nana

Ganesh is Executive Director and Chief Economist at BERL. He has over 30 years of experience in the field of economics including business consulting, conference presentations, research, tutoring and lecturing in New Zealand and the UK. At BERL he works on a wide range of projects, including development strategies; cost-benefit analyses; labour market projections; infrastructure assessments; and examining policy options. The imperative for New Zealand’s competitive export-oriented economy to be strengthened has been a common theme throughout most projects. Over the past few years Ganesh’s work has seen a focus on the Māori economy and incorporating this information into a nation-wide modelling framework. The growing importance of the Māori economy to the nation’s future economic prosperity can no longer be ignored. He is an experienced conference speaker and is a regular commentator on the New Zealand economy for various media.

Charles Waldegrave

Charles Waldegrave is Coordinator of the Family Centre Pākehā (European) Section and leader of the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit.
He co-leads the ‘New Zealand Poverty Measurement Project’ (NZPMP) which has provided the evidence base for considerable public policy debate and social and economic changes in New Zealand. He also co-leads the New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NZLSA) research programme. He is one of the founders of ‘Just Therapy’, an internationally recognised approach to addressing cultural, gender and socioeconomic contexts in therapy. He is regularly contracted to lead workshops in a range of areas of applied social policy internationally on every continent. He publishes regularly in all of the above areas.

Professor Chris Cunningham

Professor Chris Cunningham (Ngāti Toa and Ngāti Raukawa) is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit (FCSPRU). He is a leading Māori health and public health researcher in Aotearoa New Zealand. Professor Cunningham is also Professor for Māori Health and Director of the Research Centre for Maori Health and Development (RCMHD) at Massey University, and co-director for He Kainga Oranga Housing & Health Research Programme. Chris has a strong background in both policy development and research. He has published extensively in the areas of public health and Māori health and development.

Dr Fiona Cram

Dr Fiona Cram is of Ngati Pahauwera descent and has a PhD in social and developmental psychology from the University of Otago. She has lectured in Social Psychology and has also been a senior research fellow at the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education, at the University of Auckland. In 2003 Fiona established Katoa Ltd – a Maori indigenous research organisation that undertakes Kaupapa Maori (by Maori, for Maori) research and evaluation, as well as offering a range of research and evaluation training. Fiona’s research interests are wide-ranging including Maori health, justice and education.

Dr Bev James

Dr Bev James has extensive experience in social research and evaluation, policy analysis, service design and working with community groups to develop evidence-based tools and solutions. After working as a senior lecturer, holding management and policy positions in the public service and in local government, she has been director of Public Policy & Research since 1998. Bev has been involved in a number of public good science programmes looking at housing downsizing, repairs and maintenance, community resilience and residential movement. Bev has led two monitoring projects on the Retirement Villages Act for the Commission for Financial Capability. Bev has extensive experience in working with and supporting community based research initiatives. Key areas of research are: housing; ageing society; community resilience and development and public participation in resource management.

Ian Mitchell

Ian leads the property advisory division of Livingston and Associates and has over 25 years’ experience in property consultancy. Prior to setting up Livingston and Associates’ property consultancy services he was the national director of Consulting and Research at DTZ and its predecessors including Darroch. Ian’s areas of expertise include mediation and arbitration services, quantitative and qualitative research, econometric modelling, property market forecasting, social and demographic profiling, financial feasibility analysis, project management, policy development and client relationship management. Ian has presented research papers at a number of international conferences and published articles based on his research in industry and refereed journals. Ian has also advised Ministers on a number of housing related issues. His most recent appointment was to a technical advisory group on shared equity reporting to the Minister of Housing and Finance under the previous government.

Dr Michael Rehm

Michael is a Senior Lecturer in Property at the University of Auckland Business School. Michael’s research focus has been on the development of hedonic pricing models used to isolate and better understand specific behaviour of market participants within residential and office markets. His research incorporates geographic information systems (GIS) to model and explore the often underappreciated spatial relationships prevalent in property markets including work on school zoning, proximity to cell phone towers and leaky building stigma. Michael’s research on leaky buildings was featured in In the Leaky Building Crisis: Understanding the Issues, a book on New Zealand’s leaky building crisis. His latest research is on housing affordability and the impacts of inclusionary zoning on residential land development. Michael is a member of the American Real Estate Society and the Pacific Rim Real Estate Society. In 2011 he was appointed to the Editorial board of the Pacific Rim Property Research Journal.

Professor Larry Murphy

Laurence Murphy is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Environment and was formerly Professor of Property in the University of Auckland Business School. He has published widely on property topics including home-ownership, social rental housing, mortgage securitisation, office development, the institutional evolution of listed property trusts, finance capital, and entrepreneurial urban governance. In 2014, he was the Helen Cam Visiting Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge, and held a visiting professorship at Trinity College Dublin in 2009. In 2010, he was appointed Acting-Director of “Transforming Auckland: Institutional, Technological and Cultural Innovations for Sustainable Cities”, one of three Thematic Research Initiatives (TRI) established by the University of Auckland.

Andrew Sporle

Andrew Sporle (Ngati Apa, Rangitane, Te Rarawa)
Andrew is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Auckland’s Department of tatistics, and Research Manager at McDonald Sporle Ltd. He has over two decades experience developing initiatives in social and health research, Māori research workforce development as well as official statistics research in the public, private and academic sectors. He has been involved with official data innovations since 1998, including PRIMHD (national mental health data integration), Family and Whānau Wellbeing Census Data Project, NZ Census Mortality Study, Māori Mortality study, Virtual Health Information Network and applications of the longitudinal census database.

He was the inaugural Maori health research manager at the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRCNZ) where he was involved in implementing strategies for the rapid development of Māori health research. His research interests include indigenous statistics, social inequities, Māori responsiveness of research investment and the creation of public domain tools for accessing and applying existing data. He is a founding member of Te Mana Raraunga – The Māori Data Sovereignty Network.