Kelly Keane-Tuala

Lecturer
Te Kawa a Māui

Iwi

Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitāne me Ngāpuhi.

Qualifications

BA, GradDipArts, MA

Profile

Kelly entered Te Kawa a Māui as a first-year student in MAOR 101. She went on to complete her BA majoring in te reo Māori and Education. During her postgrad studies, Kelly pulled together enough students for a MAOR 489 paper which married her two passions; te reo Māori and Linguistics. This led to her completing a Graduate Diploma of Arts in linguistics in conjunction with giving birth to her second child. In 2005, she joined Te Kawa a Māui as a part-time teaching fellow, lecturing MAOR 101 and MAOR 102. Kelly moved to Australia to complete her Masters but would return intermittently to New Zealand for short teaching contracts and to present her research at various Linguistic conferences. Not long after having her third child, Kelly took her love of Māori vocabulary and completed a Masters thesis that looked at high frequency homonyms in Māori. Kelly has just finished teaching MAOR 101 and 102 over the summer trimester and this year, has taken on the role of Tohu coordinator and lecturer for MAOR 003.

Contributions to te reo

  • 2005 Co-created and co-produced the Māori word of the day website ‘Kupu o te rā’
  • 2005-Present, Teaches ‘Hā o te rā’; te reo Māori online
  • 2009 Presented her research on the two alternate positions of diectic particles at COOL8
  • 2010 Māori language awards co-recipient for online Māori language classes
  • 2014 Presented her Masters research at CLESOL

Selected publications

Kelly Keane. Ngā manu – birds, Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 3-Feb-15