Professor Yvonne Te Ruki Rangi o Tangaroa Underhill-Sem has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi; one of Aotearoa's highest academic honours.

The Pacific Studies scholar at Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland), was recognised in the Royal Society Te Apārangi's latest cohort of Fellows.

Her election acknowledges a Pacific feminist and decolonial approach to geography, population studies, development and Pacific Studies.

It places Professor Underhill-Sem among scholars whose work has made contributions to knowledge and to communities in Aotearoa and across the Pacific.

Professor Underhill-Sem is of Cook Islands, Niuean and Pākehā descent.

She has spent more than three decades advancing research grounded in Pacific epistemologies and work has centred women's lived experiences, embodiment and mobility.

Her scholarship has also spanned climate and labour mobility, population and development, feminist political ecology and research on menstruation, maternities and gendered care economies in the Pacific.

She said the honour reflected more than her own contribution.

"I receive this honour with deep humility," Professor Underhill-Sem said.

"This recognition reflects generations of Pacific women whose thinking, care work and leadership have long been overlooked, and the communities who trusted me with their stories.

"My work has always been accountable to them."

Her research has been recognised for challenging colonial development paradigms and reframing population and development debates through relational, Indigenous and feminist lenses.

It has also influenced policy, funding priorities and development practice.

At the same time, it has strengthened Pacific-led theory, research methodologies and the mentoring of emerging Pacific scholars.

Professor Underhill-Sem said the recognition also reinforced her responsibility as a Pacific woman in academia.

"As Pacific scholars, we carry our ancestors, families, our histories and our futures with us into these spaces," Professor Underhill-Sem said.

"This Fellowship strengthens my commitment to opening doors, disrupting unjust systems, and ensuring Pacific ways of knowing remain central — not marginal — in global scholarship."

She has held senior leadership roles across universities, government and regional institutions.

These roles have included Director of Development Studies at the University of Auckland, Deputy Moderator Pacific for the Performance-Based Research Fund, and membership on national and international science and gender equity panels.

In 2022, she received the Dame Joan Metge Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi, before being appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2024 for services to tertiary education and Pacific development, and later being elected a Fellow of the Pacific Academy of Sciences and named Distinguished Geographer by the New Zealand Geographical Society in 2025.

The formal induction into the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi will take place in Wellington on 30 April.