William Tunmer is Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at the Massey University Institute of Education. He received his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979, specializing in the areas of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive development.

From 1980 to 1988 he held the positions of Research Fellow, Lecturer, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Educational Psychology at Massey University, where he served as Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Education.

Professor Tunmer has published over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and books on early literacy development, literacy learning difficulties, and reading intervention. He has served on the editorial boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Language and Education, Reading and Writing, and Journal of Learning Disabilities, and in 2012 he completed a 5-year term as Associate Editor of Reading and Writing.

Major addresses include the 1998 Mcdonnell-Pew Research Seminar at Oxford University, the 1999 Herbison Lecture (New Zealand), the 2001 Schonell Memorial Lecture (Australia), the 2009 Cruickshank Memorial Lecture (IARLD), as well as invited scientific addresses at the 1996, 2000, and 2012 International Congresses of Psychology (Montreal, Stockholm, Cape Town) and three NATO Advanced Studies Institutes (France, 1991; Portugal, 1994; Italy, 2001).

Professor Tunmer has been a Visiting Scholar at the School at Education at Stanford University, the Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Texas, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), Haskins Laboratories at Yale University, the Child Research and Study Centre at SUNY Albany, the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas.

In 1999 Professor Tunmer was co-winner of the International Reading Association’s Dina Feitelson Award for Excellence in Research.

His latest publication is:

Tunmer, W.E., & Chapman, J.W. (Eds.) (2015). Equity and excellence in literacy education: The case of New Zealand