Rate My Professor Jennifer Cattermole

Associate Professor Jennifer Cattermole serves as Head of the School of Performing Arts within the Humanities Division at the University of Otago. She holds an MA from the University of Otago and a PhD from Macquarie University. An accomplished ethnomusicologist, her primary research field focuses on Māori, Moriori, and Pacific Islander musics. She investigates how individuals use music to express and shape their relationships with others, specific places, and the natural environment. Cattermole is particularly passionate about taonga pūoro, the traditional Māori musical instruments, and is an experienced player, maker, and educator in this area. Her earlier academic work includes theses on Aotearoa roots reggae and Fijian stringband music. First introduced to ethnomusicology as an undergraduate at Otago, she remains committed to fostering community music-making, leading two ukulele groups and sharing her expertise on taonga pūoro in university, school, and marae settings.

In 2016-2019, she was awarded a prestigious Marsden grant to research the origins and development of Māori and Moriori musical instruments, which led to her authored book Echoes from Hawaiki: The origins and development of Māori and Moriori musical instruments, published by Otago University Press in 2024. Other notable publications include "Sounding out the 'Hawaiki zone': What musical instruments reveal about Polynesian voyaging and settlement" (Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 2023), "Investigating the sonic characteristics of New Zealand’s Indigenous instruments: Taonga pūoro and miheke oro (Māori and Moriori musical instruments)" (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2023), "Moonlight Leta Volume 1. Musical Transitions: Marshallese String Band Music Today and Yesterday," and "Beyond the Black Atlantic: Black Outernationality and Afrocentrism in Aotearoa/New Zealand Roots Reggae" (2013). Cattermole teaches courses such as World Music, Music in New Zealand, Performance Studies, and Performance in Asia and the Pacific. She supervises postgraduate students on topics including Māori and Pacific Islander musics, music and identity, music and place/environment, and music and power. Selected supervisions include PhD theses by Irene Karongo Hundleby ("Kwaimani Ana Liohaua Gia: The Heart of Us") and Agastya Rama Listya ("The Conceptualisation and Sustainability of Rotenese Gong Music"). As a member of the steering group for the Performance of the Real Research Theme, she contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives at Otago.