Karen Waldie

Karen Elizabeth Waldie is a Canadian–New Zealand academic psychologist, and is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in understanding the causes of neurodivergence such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Early life and education Waldie was born in Vancouver, and undertook her undergraduate education at the University of Victoria under the honors supervision of the late Emeritus Professor Otfried Spreen. She then completed an MSc, followed by a PhD titled Hemispheric specialization for reading in subtypes of children with developmental dyslexia, both at the University of Calgary. Her doctoral work was supervised by Lary Mosley.

Academic career

Waldie and her New Zealand husband psychologist Professor Ian Kirk moved back to New Zealand, and Waldie joined the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study at the University of Otago as a research fellow. She joined the faculty of the University of Auckland in 2001, and was appointed to full professor in 2020.

Waldie's research focuses on understanding the causes of neurodivergence, covering conditions such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia and dyscalculia. She uses techniques such functional magnetic resonance imaging to see differences between activity in neurodivergent brains and ordinary brains. As a named investigator on the Growing Up in New Zealand team, Waldie led research analysing paracetamol use by pregnant women, finding a link to childhood depression. She was a principal investigator on a 2019 Marsden grant to investigate links between environment and childhood mental health. Waldie was also an associate investigator in a 2022 funded Marsden grant titled Revealing Dynamic ADHD Brain Behaviour using Hyperband MRI.

Waldie contributed to The Chronicle of Cognition, a collaborative work 'tracing histories of human and non-human cognition through live events, online contributions and a large-scale wall work.'

In 2019 Waldie was a NEXT Woman of the Year finalist, with the award finally being won by Diana Sarfati.

Selected works