Rate My Professor Albany Lucas

Albany Lucas serves as an Assistant Research Fellow in the Centre for Pacific Health, known as Va’a o Tautai, within the Division of Health Sciences at the University of Otago, Dunedin. Of Kiribati and Pākehā descent, she was born and raised in Dunedin and has completed her entire tertiary education at the University of Otago. Her qualifications include a Master of Bioethics and Health Law and a Diploma for Graduates in Psychology (DipGrad(PSYC)). Albany is currently a PhD candidate supported by an HRC Pacific PhD scholarship and aspires to retrain as a clinical psychologist to address mental health challenges faced by Pacific peoples, who experience higher rates of mental disorders in New Zealand compared to the general population. She took up the position of Academic Coordinator in the Division of Health Sciences' Pacific Islands Research and Student Support Unit in February 2015, while serving as the main income earner for her family, which includes two children. Her personal and familial experiences with mental illness have fueled her passion for improving mental health support for Pacific students and communities.

Albany's research centers on Pacific health, utilizing strengths-based quantitative approaches like the Tivaivai research framework for projects involving New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure. She contributes to the Quantitative Social Science Research Group in Paediatrics & Child Health. Her publications include "Do sleep interventions change sleep duration in children aged 0-5 years? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials" (2021), "Pacific Families Navigating Responsiveness and Children’s Sleep in Aotearoa New Zealand" (2021), "Sleep and parenting in ethnically diverse Pacific families in southern New Zealand: A qualitative exploration" (2021), "Setting sail and returning home. Research voyaging in Aotearoa" (2020), "An Application of a Tivaivai Research framework to a quantitative Pacific health research project using New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure: Tivaivai framework for quantitative Pacific research" (2020), and "A Tivaivai research framework: A strengths-based quantitative approach to Pacific health research" (2025). These works have accumulated 60 citations on ResearchGate. Additionally, she serves on the Central Health and Disability Ethics Committee.