Awardees

GWNZ Fellowship, 2022-2023

Leola Meynell

Leola Meynell, PhD in Social Sciences, Massey University

Leola Meynell is a PhD candidate in Psychology at Massey University, where she is researching how climate change is affecting women's feelings and decisions about having children, in the post-industrial contexts of Aotearoa NZ, the UK, and the US. Leola is a Fulbright scholar, and will undertake research as a visiting student researcher in California in 2023, to understand how environmental traumas, including experiences of wildfires, affects the reproductive decisions of women who live in California. The GWNZ Fellowship will support Leola's research in California, enabling her to bring home academic and policy understandings on climate change adaptation to Aotearoa NZ. Alongside her research, Leola also teaches psychology courses in The Hearth research cluster at Massey University, which draws on feminist scholarship to respond ethically and creatively to our worlding crises.