Our Team
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Rachel Simon-Kumar
Principal Investigator
Rachel Simon-Kumar’s research encompasses themes in gender studies, migration and diversity, and international development. A particular focus of her research is among ethnic women in New Zealand in areas such as: family and sexual violence, abortion, and politics. Her most recent book is Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification: The Politics of Mobility in Aotearoa/New Zealand (co-edited with F. Collins and W. Friesen, Palgrave Macmillan, July 2019). She has held research grants from the Health Research Council (2019) and the Royal Society of New Zealand (2009, 2019).
Janine Paynter
Principal Investigator
Janine Paynter is a scientist with an eclectic background who has settled to enjoy solving population health problems using increasingly large datasets. Janine’s experience in population health began with tobacco control and looking at the impact of point of sale marketing on youth susceptibility to smoking. Her recent work has involved linking large administrative data sets to measure vaccine effectiveness and inequities in immunisation coverage. Janine brings her expertise in large data, along with passion for diversity and equity to the problem of gender bias in New Zealand communities.
Vartika Sharma
Research Fellow
Dr Sharma is a Research Fellow at the School of Population Health, The University of Auckland. She is a public health specialist with specific interest in women’s health, ethnic minority health and youth mental health. Her research work is strongly grounded in building meaningful community partnerships and elevating their voices in research involving them. Dr Sharma has expertise in qualitative research methods, intersectional research and critical analysis. She will be involved in the qualitative and co-design phase of the project including supervision of students working on the project.
Annie Chiang
Research Assistant
Annie Chiang currently a PhD candidate with the Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Population Health. Her doctoral research looks at ‘missing data’ in New Zealand’s routinely collected datasets, using a mixed-methods approach.
She is experienced with working within the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure and has a passion for transforming Big Data into more friendly, bited-sized pieces of useful information. In addition to the Gender Bias in NZ Communities project, Annie is also involved in projects relating to mental health and policing, the development of an online platform for disseminating hearing health data, refugee settlement experiences.
Nikki Singh
Research Assistant
Nikki Singh is a public health honours graduate and an aspiring PhD candidate at the School of Population Health. Her background in research covers ethnic identity, intersectionality and health outcomes for Fiji-Indian rangatahi in New Zealand. Her doctoral research will explore chronic illness, particularly autoimmune diseases and identity formation for ethnic young people.
Alongside the Gender Bias project, Nikki also works as a research assistant in two FASD related projects and is the co-founder of Access to Change, an initiative that is working to establish family friendly outdoor workout stations in the South Auckland region.