Speech Research @ UoA

– An inter-disciplinary group of researchers all working on different aspects of speech research at the University of Auckland.

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ABOUT US

PROJECTS

EVENTS

OPPORTUNITIES

aBOUT uS

Speech Research @ UoA

We are a group of engineers, phoneticians, linguists and educational researchers, all involved in collaborations addressing different aspects of speech research.

MEET THE GROUP

OUR HISTORY

The history of this group is strongly intertwined to the MAONZE research project and the MAONZE research group. The MAONZE group studies sound change over time in te reo Māori. Many researchers in this group are part of the MAONZE group and other MAONZE researchers also guide and support our work. for more details on the MAONZE research group and the interesting projects that they are part of visit the MAONZE Research Group website

OPPORTUNITIES

If you are interested in working with us on any of our projects as part of your Master’s, PhD, Postdoctoral research, or as a Research Engineer, Scientist, or Assistant, please contact us.

our projects

Aotearoa voices

Our cool new platform where you can listen to the New Zealand English and te reo Māori voices we have developed.

Website courtesy: Chinmay Deshmukh, Kungeng Wu, Jin Kyu Kim, Ernest Wong, Kazuki Saegusa, Meet Patel, Brian Nguyen, Samantha Woon

Check out Aotearoa voices

MORE COOL PROJECTS FROM THE SPEECH GROUP

EVENTS

Latest Events

Speech Group @ LingSoc - Nov 2025

Speech Group members actively participated in the 2025 Annual Conference of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand, held on November 27–28 at Massey University’s Wellington campus. Learn more about the conference here.

Christmas Lunch - Nov 2025

On 5 November, we gathered in the Vice-Chancellor’s Suite at Old Government House for our annual End-of-Year and Christmas lunch. The celebration featured delicious food, a fun spectrogram reading competition, and a Secret Santa exchange!

InterSpeech - Aug 2025

Members of the Speech Group took part in the 26th Interspeech Conference, held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from August 17–21, 2025. Find out more about the conference here: https://www.interspeech2025.org/home.

MORE EVENTS

exciting stuff

What’s the group upto?

Hiraia Haami-Wells, Blues Award Recipient

October 3 2025

Hiraia was awarded the Most Meritorious Innovation (Business and Innovation) Award for founding and managing Kurutao, a flagship Māori innovation programme at the University of Auckland.

Learn more about Kurutao here: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/03/11/new-university-study-tour-maori.html

MPAi Launch

September 19 2025

MPAi was officially launched alongside Kuputaka, a Māori, glossary of terms and style guide for the University of Auckland.

Learn more about MPAi here: https://www.mpai.auckland.ac.nz/

Learn about Kuputaka here: Kuputaka

Himashi Rathnayake @ 3MT Competition

August 8 2025

Himashi was a finalist at the Three-minute Thesis competition and featured in the Uni News for her work in developing the first speech emotion recognition system for te reo Māori. Watch the 3MT presentation here.

Read the article on her research here: Himashi on Uni News