Dive into books and publications written by fellow alumni.
Share news of your published works with the University community in this directory celebrating alumni authors.
We are delighted to hear from alumni who have written a book in their academic field or beyond. We welcome all genres of fiction and non-fiction.
To share details of your book with the University and with your fellow alumni, please complete the form. Or you can scan this QR code to access the form.
Alumni authors form
by Emeritus Professor Michael Jackson
Beginnings—In Aotearoa and Abroad is a fascinating account of Michael Jackson’s life as an anthropologist and writer. He talks about growing up in Aotearoa and returning over the years, his life with a growing family in Sierra Leone among the Kuranko people, and his musings on childhood, love, poetry, regeneration, changing friendships, yoga, and the beliefs, mythologies, and rituals of different cultures.
by Dr Stephen Henry Fox
This book is an invaluable resource for understanding the profound connections between culture, healthcare, and mortality. In a world where healthcare professionals—doctors, nurses, clients, patients, and staff—are increasingly engaging in cross-cultural interactions, this text equips readers with essential insights to navigate diverse beliefs and expectations surrounding health and treatment, particularly in moments of stress and vulnerability. While healthcare is often grounded in Euro-American belief systems, this book broadens the reader's perspective, offering essential tools to enhance intercultural understanding during health crises and end-of-life care. It empowers both patients and practitioners to adapt and collaborate, fostering better treatment outcomes by bridging cultural divides. Gaining this multicultural lens is not only crucial for healthcare and cross-cultural psychology but also for confronting the universal experience of mortality—our own and that of our loved ones.
by Philip Garnock-Jones
Aotearoa has at least 2,200 native species of flowering plants that have evolved in our unique conditions, and the vast majority of them grow nowhere else on earth. This has made New Zealand a natural laboratory for studies of flower biology and a vibrant wonderland of gardens and bush for Māori and Pākehā to enjoy.
He Puāwai is a natural history of New Zealand flowers, focusing on 100 native species to represent the full range of flower phenomena of Aotearoa. Each flower’s text describes and explains its structure and functions, alongside over 500 remarkable photographs that enable the reader (with the viewer included in the book) to view the flowers miraculously in 3D.
For gardeners and foragers, for bush walks and coffee tables, He Puāwai is an inspirational natural history of the native flowers of Aotearoa.
by Andrew Lendnal
Are you worried that your child's understanding of money might be shaping into a problematic attitude of entitlement? Discover practical insights in How I Accidentally Turned My Kids Into Financially Entitled Monsters, a compelling guide to reshaping your family's financial dynamics.
Set against a backdrop of relatable anecdotes and transformative lessons, this book explores the fine line between providing and pampering. Unveil the myth of 'easy money' as the author candidly delves into common missteps that breed financial entitlement. Almost every parent has fallen into these traps, and with this book, you'll learn not just how to identify them–but to rectify them effectively.
From redefining allowance as a learning tool to tackling the 'swipe now, pay later' culture, each chapter offers tested strategies for fostering financially savvy and responsible children. Gift overload and instant gratification become teachable moments as you balance generosity with limits. With enlightening discussions on budgeting, investing, and entrepreneurship, the book turns seemingly mundane topics into exciting and teachable moments tailored for young minds.
by Rowan Simpson
Most startup advice is dangerously misguided. The mythology of the lone genius founder, the obsession with capital raising, and the theatre of startup ecosystems lead countless ventures astray.
Drawing on two decades at the heart of New Zealand's most successful technology companies—Trade Me, Xero, Vend and Timely—Rowan Simpson unravels the messy reality behind familiar glossy success stories. With raw honesty and sharp analysis, he challenges conventional wisdom by sharing compelling firsthand lessons about focused execution, team building and genuine ecosystem growth.
This myth-busting guide is essential reading for founders, investors and policymakers alike. Simpson demonstrates that embracing uncertainty, recognising patterns and learning quickly from mistakes are not just steps on the path to success—they are the path itself.
Sometimes the only way to be right is to get comfortable with being wrong.
by Kemuel DeMoville
When Maid Marian learns that she has to marry the objectionably evil and incompetent Sheriff of Nottingham, she and her ladies-in-waiting hatch a scheme to hold him at bay: Invent a band of outlaws running amok to keep the Sheriff busy. But what starts as a game of pretend soon blows up into the Sheriff hatching increasingly crazy schemes to catch the bandits, and Marian leading a double life as their leader: Robin Hood. That's right—it's the Robin Hood story as you've never seen it before, with mistaken identities, bumbling henchmen, wild and wacky sword fights and more than a little cross-dressing.
Find more play scrips for young audiences from Kemuel DeMoville here: Meet Our Authors | YouthPLAYS
by Naheen Madarbakus-Ring
This book addresses the gap between listening theory and practice by providing an outline of listening theory, offering practical listening methods, and presenting how metacognitive instruction can be integrated into real lesson practice. Applying these methods to teaching and learning can provide educators with the instructional guidance needed to offer their learners some tangibility in second language (L2) listening.
Based on original research, the book includes descriptions and accounts of teachers’ listening classroom practices to explain their teaching priorities and their teaching decisions. Further, samples of listening lessons and learners’ accounts of their listening experience provide additional insights into learning from listening. This book emphasises the challenges that both teachers and learners face in the listening classroom and suggests metacognitive instruction as a remedy for these listening difficulties. It also outlines a four-stage pedagogic cycle including listening tasks and an additional journal component that integrates traditional teaching approaches and contemporary metacognitive methods.
by Monica Macansantos
A young Filipino writer's odyssey toward home, in the wake of the loss of her poet father.
Feeling untethered after her beloved poet father passes away while she is living abroad, Monica Macansantos decides to return to the Philippines to regain her bearings. But with her father gone and her adult life rooted in the United States and New Zealand, can the land of her birth still serve as a place of healing?
In fifteen richly felt essays, Macansantos considers her family's history in the Philippines, her own experiences as an exile, and the parent who was the heart of her family's kitchen, whether standing at the stove to prepare dinner or sitting at the table to scribble in his notebook. Macansantos finds herself remaking her father's chicken adobo, but also closely rereading his poems. As she reckons with his identity as an artist, she also comes into her own as a writer, and she invites us to consider whether it is possible to carry our homes with us wherever we go.
by Alice Pearce
The saying ‘as quiet as a mouse’ does NOT apply to Ruby Loud Mouse.
Ruby finds it super tricky to stay SILENT in movies, to WHISPER in the library, or to keep QUIET on the school trip to the marae. In fact, Ruby is SO LOUD everyone is always telling her to ‘sssshhhh!’.
But when her village is under ATTACK from a ruru, Ruby learns that sometimes being LOUD is the best thing to be.
by Sarah Gallagher
In April 2018 the stars aligned and Sarah Gallagher, of the Dunedin Flat Names Project, and Dr Ian Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Otago, teamed up to create Scarfie Flats of Dunedin – a highly colourful and pictorial work featuring a fine, witty, sometimes edgy, selection of Dunedin’s well known and less well known named flats. Featuring a selection of back stories of flats, photos and associated ephemera, as well as chapters by subject matter experts, readers will appreciate the changing scene of student culture and society in Dunedin from the 1930s to the present.
by Jo Randerson
What is Art’s mysterious power to excite, confound, challenge and transform us?
Jo Randerson shares some of their Secret Art Powers—six ways that thinking like an artist can increase personal resilience, unleash innovation, dissolve unhealthy power relationships and help us describe and navigate the complex and changing world of the twenty-first century, and to sing while we do it.
by Andrew Cooper
The story of the fall of the Shah of Iran continues to captivate younger generations eager to understand Iran and the events of the 1979 revolution.
The author’s second book reconstructed the enigmatic life of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, his long reign and the disastrous sequence of events that preceded his ouster and exile in 1979.
Prior to publication, book research was published exclusively in The New York Times. Research was conducted in Iran, France, Switzerland and the UK. Interviewees included former White House officials, members of Iran’s royal family and Iranian revolutionaries.
by Duangchay Panyanouvong
How do we nurture our children’s emotional strength and well-being in a world of distractions and pressures? The Parent Guidebook is your roadmap to fostering deep, meaningful connections with your children. This book provides science-backed insights and real-life parenting strategies to help you raise emotionally resilient, mindful, and compassionate children.
Drawing from the principles of conscious parenting, Montessori education, and mindfulness, The Parent Guidebook equips parents with tools to handle challenges with empathy and intention. This guide empowers parents to build trust, resilience, and lasting bonds with their children through practical advice, powerful exercises, and real-world examples.
Whether you're navigating toddler tantrums or teenage challenges, this book is a trusted companion in your journey to raising well-rounded, emotionally intelligent children.
by Andrew Cooper
The author’s first book revisited America’s tangled relations with Middle East oil producers in the 1970s, the decade that included the first energy crisis, two oil shocks, the fourth Arab-Israel war and revolution in Iran.
The book’s central revelation that the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran conspired to manipulate oil prices, defied the laws of supply and demand, and even flooded the market with cheap oil to achieve national strategic objectives, changed the way industry experts understood the oil markets. Interviews were conducted with former officials in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations.
by John Dennett
Set in 2068 this dystopian novel follows the rise of Arif, a mysterious leader from the stateless peoples of the Mediterranean, as he instigates a stealth invasion on Southern Italy. Jeb Montalto, US Ranger Staff Sergeant, is sent with his Rangers to end the reign of a man who is seemingly willing to sacrifice everything in order to gain power.
What ensues is a powerful story that foresees the potential political, cultural and religious struggles of our future with a fascinating insight into Jeb’s internal conflict over his duties, ideals and heritage. Painfully relevant and beautifully written, Dennett’s novel is a unique and interesting interpretation of our current global uncertainties.
by Di Morris
Margaret and Elsie Balfour have been raised on a farm in South Canterbury in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The sisters' lives diverge when Elsie leaves for the United Kingdom to study medicine at Edinburgh University. As the eldest, Margaret remains at home, taking on the expected role of caring for her many siblings. When tragedy strikes, the trajectory of both of the sisters' lives is changed forever.
Beautifully illustrated and accompanied with family photographs and historical ephemera, The Writing Desk highlights the daily trials and societal prejudices that women faced in the colonial era and offers a fascinating comparison to contemporary gender imbalances young women are still challenged by today.
by Jude Sclater
A short, impactful guide that brings the power of coaching to the fingertips of every manager. Jude Sclater’s model, the Coaching Two-Step, shows managers how to take skills they already have—listening and asking questions—to guide their team members to discover their own solutions. This approach not only drives performance but also builds a culture of trust and empowerment.
With over a decade of experience coaching managers in organisations such as Deloitte, Mars and bp, Sclater explains coaching to managers in a way that doesn’t talk down to them. Instead, she uses stories and anecdotes from her own career to gently encourage the reader to give coaching a go.
Think Like a Coach will fast become a critical resource, equipping managers with the skills needed to create a supportive, high-performing team environment.
