Kadija Ayanna Nathalene Richards

Background and experience

Kadija Richards is a PhD student at the Department of Sport and Social Sciences with the project: Local anchoring of safe sport policies in transnational sport for development collaborations. This PhD project is a part of the European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA): Doctoral Training Network (DTN) in Sport Ethics and Integrity (DAiSI), is done in partnership with KU Leuven University (Belgium) and the International Olympic Committee.

For this project, Kadija aims to understand the attempts at safeguarding in sport in Southern Africa and to understand the local framing of safeguarding in the region. Additionally, she will be identifying the barriers and challenges that exist in the development of safeguarding policy, to then determine how the IOC can use this localised knowledge in the development of its regional Safeguarding Hub. 

Kadija has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (2002), a Master’s degree in Sport Behaviour and Performance (2004), both from Miami University (Miami, Florida) where she also played varsity tennis. After working in local sport in Jamaica for several years as a Sport Psychology Consultant, National Tennis Coach, and Sport Administrator, Kadija obtained an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Sports Ethics and Integrity (MAiSI) in 2019.