Elizabeth Broadbent

About Elizabeth Broadbent

Elizabeth Broadbent is a NOMIS–Collegium Helveticum Senior Fellow and a professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Broadbent received her PhD in health psychology from the University of Auckland in 2005, an MSc with first-class honors in health psychology from the University of Auckland in 2002, a Graduate Diploma in Arts in Psychology from Massey University, New Zealand, in 2000, and a BE with honors in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1995.

Before her academic career, Broadbent worked as a researcher studying fatigue in international flight operations at Air New Zealand, a design engineer at Robotechnology, and a support engineer at TransPower. She later joined the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland, serving as associate professor from 2016 to 2018, senior lecturer from 2010 to 2015 and lecturer from 2005 to 2009 before becoming professor in the same department in 2019.

NOMIS–Collegium Helveticum Senior Fellowship period: September 1, 2026 – December 15, 2026

Research focus

Broadbent’s research focuses on patients’ perceptions of illness, human–robot interaction, embodied conversational agents, psychological interventions, social support, embodied cognition, and psychoneuroimmunology.

Awards and recognition

Broadbent was elected Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi New Zealand and Fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, US, in 2022. In 2017, she received a Fulbright Senior Award to study companion robots in Boston, US, and in 2010 held visiting scholar positions at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, both in Boston. She also received the Early Career Research Excellence Award from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2008 and the Early Career Award from the International Congress of Behavioral Medicine in Germany in 2004.