Trisia Farrelly

Trisia Angela Farrelly (née Prince) is a New Zealand social anthropologist, and is a full professor at Massey University, specialising in plastic reduction and pollution, and campaigning against excessive and hazardous plastics production.

Early life and family
Farrelly is the daughter of Gabrielle and Richard Prince. In 1998, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Massey University. She is married to Matt Farrelly.

Academic career
Farrelly completed a PhD on community-based ecotourism at Massey University in 2009. Her thesis was titled Business va'avanua: cultural hybridisation and indigenous entrepreneurship in the Bouma National Heritage Park, Fiji and was supervised by Sita Venkateswar and Regina Scheyvens. Farrelly then joined the faculty at Massey, rising to associate professor in 2022 and full professor in 2024. She is co-director of Massey's Political Ecology Research Centre. Farrelly's research focuses on excessive and hazardous plastics production, and how to reduce plastic use and pollution in New Zealand and internationally.

Farrelly is a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee. Farrelly co-founded the Steering Committee of the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which has more than 300 members from 50 countries. She also co-founded the Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance and the New Zealand Product Stewardship Council, of which she is a trustee. Farrelly is a Technical Advisor to the Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environment Programme.

Farrelly is a senior editor on the editorial board of the journal Cambridge Prisms: Plastics.

Awards and honours
Farrelly was awarded a Massey University medal for Exceptional Research Citizenship, and another for Excellence in Teaching. She was a finalist in the New Zealand Women of Influence Awards in 2021, and in 2023 won a WasteMINZ Award for Excellence for Product Stewardship, for "her longstanding and ongoing work to end plastic pollution".