Rate My Professor Mele Taumoepeau

Following her PhD, Dr Taumoepeau was a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago before taking up a lecturing position. She advanced to Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor, serving from 2011 to 2022. She developed the role of Department Adviser for Pacific Students, offering pastoral care and academic support. In 2016, she became the inaugural Associate Dean (Pacific) in the Division of Sciences and chaired the Pacific Health Research Committee of the Health Research Council of New Zealand. She was awarded a Marsden Fund Grant. Her research examines preschool children's socio-emotional development, parent-child conversations about mental states and their relation to children's social understanding, cross-cultural differences in talk about the mind, child language development, and the impact of ethnicity and culture on children's social understanding. Notable publications include 'Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding' (Child Development, 2006), 'Stepping stones to others’ minds: Maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months' (Child Development, 2008), and 'Coaching in maternal reminiscing with preschoolers leads to elaborative and coherent personal narratives in early adolescence' (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2020). Her scholarship has over 3,000 citations.