Emele Ugavule is a Tokelauan, Uvean, and Fijian storyteller, working as a performer, writer, movement director, director, creative producer, cultural strategist and educator. A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, she has worked with various artists and organisations across the Pacific. Her work centres on Indigenous Oceanic storytelling, exploring themes of temporality, memory, kinship, technology and knowledge transmission.

She is a founding member of Studio Kiin, an Indigenous-led creative studio and collective, served as the Creative Director of Talanoa, a platform dedicated to Oceanic digital storytelling, and is represented by Liberty Artist Management.

Her accolades include the NIDA X, ONEONESIX Tagata Moana, Monash Performing Arts Centre Progress Links and Brand X Live Arts residencies in 2025, Creative Australia and Creative New Zealand Digital fellowship in 2022, Create NSW + Think + Do Foundation In other words residency in 2021, Critical Path Digital Residency in 2021-22, and Ignition Initiative Playwriting Australia in 2020. In 2024, she was a Read NZ Pōkai Tuhi writer, selected for Playmarket NZ’s Brown Ink intiative, and was the first Melanesian Emerging Pasifika Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka.

She has spoken as a moderator, panelist and keynote speaker at events and festivals in Switzerland, Aotearoa, Fiji and Australia.

Emele has tutored at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts and currently she is a Kaitātaki Whakaari at Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa: NZ Drama School.