Professor Tracey McIntosh MNZM

Tracey McIntosh, MNZM, is Ngāi Tūhoe and is Professor of Indigenous Studies in Te Wānanga o Waipapa (School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies) at the University of Auckland. She is  a Commissioner of Te Kāhui Tātari Ture: Criminal Cases Review Commission. She has recently finished her appointment as  Chief Science Advisor for the Ministry of Social Development. She was the former Co-Director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence.

She previously taught in the sociology and criminology programme at the University of Auckland. She was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and lectured at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. She has sat on a number of assessment panels including PBRF panels (Māori Knowledge and Development and Social Sciences) Marsden Social Science Panel, Rutherford Discovery, James Cook Fellowship and Health Research Council Panels.

In 2012 she served as the co-chair of the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. In 2018-2019 she was a member of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) which released the report 'Whakmana Tangata: Restoring Dignity to Social Security in New Zealand' (2019) . She was also a member of Te Uepū Hapai i te Ora- The Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group which released the report 'He Waka Roimata: Transforming our Criminal Justice System' (2019) and 'Turuki! Turuki!' (2019). In 2022 she was a member of the Advisory Commission into the Incarceration Rates of Aboriginal Peoples in South Australia. From 2022-2024 she was an Advisor to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. She was also a member of an Acting Chair of He Whenua Taurikura: Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism.  
She sits on a range of advisory groups and boards for government and community organisations. She has been active in education and creative writing programmes in prisons.

Her recent research focused on incarceration (particularly of Māori and Indigenous peoples) and issues pertaining to state care,  poverty, inequality and social justice. She recognises the significance of working with those that have lived experience and expertise of incarceration, state care and marginalisation and acknowledges them as experts of their own condition. She has a strong interest in the interface between research and policy.

Her earlier work looked at extreme death experience (genocide, war, torture) particularly in the way it relates to what she calls systematic suffering. Her work in this area has focused on the Holocaust and on the Rwandan genocide.

Tracey has a commitment to addressing issues that concern Māori and draws on a critical Indigenous studies framework.