Rosalina Richards

Rosalina Richards is a Samoan New Zealand behavioural psychologist, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in Pacific public health.

Academic career
Richards was born and grew up in the South Island of New Zealand, and is of Samoan and English ancestry. She completed a PhD titled Factors influencing physical activity participation during adolescence and young adulthood at the University of Otago, supervised by Anthony Reeder. The thesis was listed as an exceptional PhD thesis in the Division of Health Sciences for 2007. Richards then joined the faculty at Otago, rising to associate professor in 2019 and full professor in 2023.

Richards was the inaugural Director of the Va'a o Tautai – Centre for Pacific Health at Otago, which was launched in 2018. She is also Co-Director, with Anne-Marie Jackson, of the Coastal People: Southern Skies Centre of Research Excellence, where she is responsible for capacity development and Pacific strategy.

Richards is a behavioural psychologist working in public health, and her research has covered topics such as healthy sleep practices, restoration of marine environments, and their importance in Pacific culture, and cancer prevention. Richards and colleagues surveyed screentime in teenagers, and found that the more hours teens reported watching television or playing games online, the less close their relationship to their parents. She was part of a team who found Pacific communities in New Zealand call the National Poison Centre less often than expected, and part of another team that found rates of Chronic Kidney Disease were five times higher than expected in Samoan people in New Zealand.