Amanda Smith Barusch is an American–New Zealand academic, and is professor emerita at the University of Otago, specialising in social work and gerontology.

[1] She completed a Bachelor of Arts in psychology at Reed College and a Master and Doctorate of Social Welfare both at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her thesis was on the relationships between formal services and family caregivers for frail elderly people in different living arrangements.

[2] Barusch also has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, which she earned from the University of Utah in 2015.

[1] Barusch was appointed to Otago as their first professor of social work in 2007,[5] giving her inaugural professorial address in 2008.