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University of Bedfordshire
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
UK, LU1 3JU
Principal Lecturer
After undertaking my initial degree in physical education at the then Northern Ireland Polytechnic I did my initial teaching (NQT) year in a specialist school teaching young offenders – a particularly interesting and challenging task in the context of Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Following this I spent 3 years as a graduate researching youth unemployment. I joined the School of Physical Education and Sport Studies as a senior lecturer in what was then Bedford College of Higher Education in 1986.
My role as Academic Director for the Department of Physical Education and Sport Studies draws on over 25 years developing, leading and externally examining a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
The units that I design and teach and my research are deeply intertwined. I passionately believe that the realties of our contemporary world and its challenges and problems make sport sociology one of the most important areas within all of the ‘sport sciences.’ The task of a ‘critical’ sociological analysis of sport is provide our students with a rich and grounded academic understanding that sport and physical education are complex, dynamic and at times contradictory arenas of modern social life.
Although all the members of the socio-cultural team within the Department collaborate extensively on unit design and delivery my current unit leadership is with: Sports Leadership: Working Creatively with Diversity (year 2) Critical Sociological Perspectives of Sport and Physical Education (year 3) Sport, Nation and Community (year 3).
As well as being the lead author and editor of one of the best selling sport sociology texts (now in its second edition), I am also currently researching and writing a number of books and articles focused on: the problem of climate change and the possibility of ‘post-carbon sport’; social cohesion and the uses and misuses of sport in the UK’s diverse communities and creating transformative and sustainable change within families experiencing weight management problems and mediating conflict.
This latter work stems from my consultancy and work with the Beezee Bodies family intervention programme that is seeking to create long-term improvements in children’s weight management. In 2011-12 this programme will be running throughout Bedfordshire on at least three locations and in 2012-13 the programme will be launched nationally.
