Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley is a New Zealand Sociologist. He is also a Principal Investigator on the MBIE-funded programme, Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New Zealand (2014-2020). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and a Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Paul is the editor or author of 27 books, which include a biography of Ranginui Walker (Mata Toa. The Life and Times of Ranginui Walker, 2009), a number of books on ethnic identity and immigration (Welcome to Our World? Immigration and the Reshaping of New Zealand, 2012) and demographic and economic change (Rebooting the Regions, 2016) as well as numerous articles and book chapters.