Belinda Wheaton is a New Zealand cultural sociologist, and is a full professor at the University of Waikato, specialising in sport, leisure and well-being research, including sports policy and gender research.
She completed a PhD titled Consumption, lifestyle and gendered identities in post-modern sports: the case of windsurfing at the University of Brighton in 1997.
[2] Wheaton joined the faculty of the University of Waikato in 2015, rising to full professor in the Te Huataki Waiora School of Health in 2020.
[3] Wheaton researches sports, leisure and well-being, and has written about the Caster Semenya ruling,[4] snowboarding as a marquee event at the Olympics,[5] and aging and action sports.
Wheaton suggests that current water safety approaches are not effective for these communities, but that better cultural understanding and support for new migrants might lead to improved water safety for these groups.