• PhD in Psychology (University of Southern Queensland, 2009)
• Master of Biostatistics (University of Sydney, 2020)
• Master of Science in Applied Psychology (University of Manchester, 2003)
• Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (University of Canberra, 1999)
• Bachelor of Arts (Charles Sturt University, 2000)
• Bachelor of Music (Australian National University, 1998)

Associate Professor Richard Burns is a behavioural scientist, quantitative researcher and Co-Head of the Department of Health Economics, Wellbeing and Society (DHEWS) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH), Australian National University (ANU). He currently serves as  both Delegated Authority and Convenor for Higher Degree Research (HDR) at NCEPH.

Before moving into research at ANU in March 2007, Associate Professor Burns worked as a musician, teacher, and careers advisor in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Associate Professor Burns is an internationally recognised social psychiatric epidemiologist and methodologist, whose substantive research spans wellbeing, individual differences and mental health across the lifecourse, underpinned by methodological expertise in psychometrics, longitudinal and multilevel modelling, structural equation modelling and biostatistics. He is a Tier 2 senior collaborator with the Global Burden of Disease study, contributing to successive GBD cycles, and maintains research partnerships across psychology, medicine, epidemiology and the social sciences. He has authored 129 peer-reviewed journal articles (46 as senior author), a widely cited undergraduate research methods textbook published by SAGE (more than 2,500 citations), several book chapters, and numerous policy and consultancy reports. His work has attracted more than 22,900 citations, with 81% of his articles published in Q1 journals (97% in Q1 or Q2). He has led or contributed to collaborative research and consultancy funding totalling approximately AU$4 million, including NHMRC-funded research and commissioned work for the Commonwealth Departments of Health and Defence.

Associate Professor Burns has an extensive 25-year teaching background and has convened POPH 3000 Introduction to Population Health since 2016. He contributes to other courses across ANU and has taught research methods, statistics and psychology units across ANU and internationally. As HDR Convenor and, since 2026, interim HDR Delegated Authority for NCEPH, he oversees HDR recruitment, scholarship allocation, pastoral care and milestone review for the School's postgraduate research program, and has supervised or chaired 16 HDR and Honours candidates, with a further 17 as associate supervisor. His university service includes membership and chairing of ANU HDR and Undergraduate Appeals Committee, and membership of the HDR Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Policy Committee and the HDR Milestone Review Committee. He sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Happiness and Health and has been invited to give keynote addresses to Catholic Health Australia, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Psychological Society's College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists, and the International Alliance of Research Universities Ageing Network.

Associate Professor Burns' research programme examines the psychological processes and individual differences that shape mental health and wellbeing across the lifecourse, with a particular focus on improving the theoretical models and measurement tools used to understand these phenomena. He has made sustained contributions to the psychometric structure of widely used wellbeing and mental health measures, demonstrating that their structure is not invariant across the lifespan and challenging prevailing models of positive mental health. He led the development of the Brief Scales of Flourishing (BS-F), a set of validated single-item measures of flourishing and languishing, and has extended the concept of mental health literacy through a programme of research on “wellbeing literacy”. His work has shown that wellbeing and flourishing protect against the onset of common mental disorders, and that flourishing is characterised more by the absence of dysfunctional emotion-regulation strategies than by increased use of adaptive ones. A parallel strand of his research, extending from his PhD, examines the effects of organisational and environmental factors on employee and teacher wellbeing, and he maintains an active programme on the mental health of youth and emerging adults, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trajectory of Australian tertiary students’ mental health.

• Psychometrics and measurement of wellbeing and mental health across the lifespan
• Flourishing and languishing, including the development of the Brief Scales of Flourishing (BS-F)
• Wellbeing literacy
• Protective effects of wellbeing and flourishing against common mental disorders
• Organisational and environmental influences on employee and teacher wellbeing
• Mental health of youth and emerging adults, including COVID-19 impacts on tertiary student mental health
• Quantitative methods: longitudinal and multilevel modelling, structural equation modelling, biostatistics