Annette Henderson

Annette Margaret Elizabeth Henderson is a New Zealand developmental psychologist, and is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in the development of cooperation in children. She was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and has been a principal investigator on two Marsden grants.

Academic career
Henderson completed a Master of Science at the University of Calgary and a PhD titled Conventionality and children's word learning at Queen's University. Henderson completed postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland, before joining the faculty of the University of Auckland in 2009, rising to full professor in 2024. Henderson established and is the director of the Early Learning Laboratory at Auckland. Henderson was president of the Australasian Human Development Association from 2019, and served on the editorial board of the Journal of Cognition and Development.

Henderson was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2015, to research the impact of culture and interactions with caregivers on the development of cooperation in young children, by comparing children in New Zealand and Vanuatu. Henderson has also been a principal investigator on two Marsden grants, a fast start grant in 2013 called Shaping cooperation: identifying how genes, experience, and socio-cognitive ability influence the development of cooperation in early childhood, with Donald Love, and a full grant in 2017 called Conflict recovery in families: Why inevitable conflict does not have to be detrimental, with Nickola Overall and Elizabeth Peterson.

Henderson featured as one of the psychologists on the TVNZ series Secret Life of Girls.