Siautu Alefaio-Tugia

Siautu Alefaio-Tugia
Nationality	New Zealand
Citizenship	New Zealand
Alma mater	Monash University (PhD 2015) Massey University (PGDipEdPsych 2001) University of Auckland (BA Psychology)
Known for	Founder of NIUPatCH collective; book Pacific-Indigenous Psychology
Awards	Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (2020) Fulbright New Zealand Scholar Award (2023)
Scientific career
Fields	Pacific-Indigenous psychology; humanitarian and disaster psychology
Institutions	Massey University (2001–2023) University of Otago (2024–present)
Thesis	Galuola: A NIU way for informing psychology from the cultural context of Fa‘a Samoa  (2015)

Siautu Alefaio-Tugia is a Samoan-New Zealand psychologist whose work integrates Pacific-Indigenous knowledge with humanitarian and disaster-resilience psychology. In 2024 she became the first Pacific Professor of Psychology at the University of Otago.^[1][2][3]

Alefaio-Tugia was born in Dunedin and raised in Ōtara, South Auckland, within a Samoan church community.^[4] She completed a BA in psychology at the University of Auckland, a Post-graduate Diploma in Educational Psychology at Massey University (2001), and a PhD in Educational Psychology at Monash University (2015).^[5]

Alefaio-Tugia registered as one of New Zealand's first Samoan-descended educational psychologists in 2001 and joined Massey University's School of Psychology, rising to Associate Professor and Associate Dean Pacific.^[6] Her appointment to Otago in 2024 made her the university's inaugural Pacific professor of psychology, charged with growing Pacific research capacity and culturally responsive training.^[1]

Beyond academia she founded NIUPatCH (Navigate In Unity: Pacific Approaches to Community-Humanitarianism) in 2016 and created the TalanoaHUBBS symposium series linking Pacific communities with researchers.^[7]

Alefaio-Tugia's scholarship centres on Pacific world-views of well-being, disaster response and community resilience. Her Rutherford Discovery Fellowship project (2020–2025) reframes humanitarian psychology through Pacific-diasporic practices of disaster relief.^[8] As a Fulbright New Zealand Scholar (2023) she collaborated with the National Disaster Preparedness Training Centre, University of Hawai‘i, and Brown University's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies on Pacific-diasporic disaster resilience.^[9]

• Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (Royal Society Te Apārangi, 2020).^[10]
• Fulbright New Zealand Scholar Award (2023).^[7]

• Alefaio-Tugia, S. Pacific-Indigenous Psychology: Galuola, A NIU-Wave of Psychological Practices. Springer, 2022.Pacific-Indigenous Psychology. Springer. 2022. ISBN 978-3-031-14431-8.
• Alefaio-Tugia, S. “Galuola: A NIU way for informing psychology from the cultural context of Fa‘a Samoa.” PhD thesis, Monash University, 2015.Siautu Alefaio-Tugia (2015). Galuola: A NIU way for informing psychology from the cultural context of Fa‘a Samoa (PhD). Monash University.