Tahu Kukutai belongs to the Ngāti Tīpa, Ngāti Maniapoto and Te Aupouri tribes and is Associate Professor of demography at the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis, University of Waikato. Tahu specialises in Māori and indigenous demographic research and has written extensively on issues of Māori and tribal population change, identity, and inequality. She also has an ongoing interest in how governments around the world count and classify populations by ethnic-racial and citizenship criteria. Tahu is a founding member of Te Mana Raraunga: the Māori data sovereignty network, Vice President of the Population Association of New Zealand and Deputy Director of the Ageing Well National Science Challenge. She was a journalist in a former life.