Pacific Identities and Well-being: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Margaret Agee leads the Counsellor Education Programme in the School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work at the University of Auckland. With Philip Culbertson and Cabrini ‘Ofa Makasiale, she coedited Penina Uliluli: Contemporary challenges in mental health for Pacific peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), and she currently coedits the New Zealand Journal of Counselling with Philip Culbertson.

Tracey McIntosh (Tuhoe) is a sociologist whose interests broadly look at processes of exclusion and marginalisation, with a more recent focus on the experience of incarceration. She is a past director of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga (a world-class Centre of Excellence for research relevant to Maori communities funded by TEAC and hosted by the University of Auckland) and is the current joint editor of AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples and the MAI Journal. She lectures in the Sociology Department of the University of Auckland.

Philip Culbertson pretends he is retired, but he actually holds adjunct faculty status at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. He has edited two previous books on Pasifika mental health: Counselling Issues in South Pacific Communities (1997) and Penina Uliuli: Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health for Pacific Peoples (2007, co-edited with Margaret Nelson Agee and Cabrini ‘Ofa Makasiale). With Margaret Agee, he is coeditor of the New Zealand Journal of Counselling.

Cabrini ‘Ofa Makasiale is a Catholic sister living in community with three other sisters. She works for Relationships Aotearoa Counselling Services (NGO) as the Pacific clinical cultural adviser. She is a qualified teacher, holds a Master’s/Mistress’ degree in Spirituality (2008), a postgraduate Diploma in Psychotherapy (1993), a Certificate in Group Analysis (2000) and a Proficiency Certificate in Post-Graduate Supervision (2011).