Physical Culture, Sport and Health Research Group
Our research aims to contribute critical and innovative insights across a range of contemporary issues and challenges in health, sport and physical cultural contexts.
Photo: Nubia Navarro
What do we do?
Our interdisciplinary group conducts socio-cultural research on health, physical activity and cultural practices. We investigate how embodied experiences are shaped by broader political, economic, social-cultural, and technological contexts. Addressing and transforming inequalities is central to what we do.
We examine these issues across four interrelated research areas: Wellbeing across the lifecourse; Digital cultures; Sustainable cities and communities; Education and development.
Using innovative methods our research contributes critical insights into the complex issues affecting individual and social well-being. We seek to:
- develop new knowledge and ways of understanding key challenges
- inform policy reform in health, physical activity and cultural institutions
- collaborate with organisations to effect change and improve professional practice
- contribute to knowledge sharing through local and global networks
- engage the public in conversations about societal change
Research themes
Contributing critical insights across four interrelated research areas.
Featured projects
- Inequalities in older people: a plan for action (Dr Nikki Coghill and Dr Jessica Francombe-Webb)
- Researching the social context of women’s recovery from depression (Professor Simone Fullagar)
- Living with Ménière’s Disease: Understanding Patient Experiences of Mental Health and Well-being (Dr Cassandra Phoenix)
- The Digital Health Generation: The impact of ‘healthy lifestyle’ technologies on young people's learning, identities and health practices (Dr Emma Rich)
- Navigating Bodies, Borders and the Global Game: An Ethnography of Youth, Football and the Politics of Privation in Ghana, West Africa (Dr Darragh McGee)
- Sculpting Girls’ Subjectivities: Physical Culture & the ‘Normalised’ Body (Dr Jessica Francombe-Webb)
- Doing coaching justice’: Promoting a critical consciousness in sports coaching research (Dr Anthony Bush)
- Cycling Against Poverty? Researching a Sport for Development Movement and an 'Object' in/for Development (Dr Brad Millington)
- A Sociology of Physical Activity and Health for Young People (Dr Gareth Wiltshire)
- Submarine geographies: The body, the senses and the mediation of tourist experience (Dr Stephanie Merchant)
- Producing/Consuming ‘Romantic Scotland’: Exhibitions, Heritage, Nation & the Chinese Market (Dr Andrew Manley)
- Engaging urban inequalities through sport and physical activity initiatives: From Baltimore to Bristol (Dr Bryan C Clift)
- Addressing eating disorders and body disaffection in schools: The impact of body pedagogies and school-based prevention programmes (Niamh Ni Shuilleabhain)
- Reimagining Children’s Physical Cultures (Annaleise Depper)
People
Staff
- Dr Anthony Bush
- Dr Bryan Clift
- Dr Nikki Coghill
- Dr Jessica Francombe-Webb
- Professor Simone Fullagar
- Dr Andrew Manley
- Dr Darragh McGee
- Dr Stephanie Merchant
- Dr Brad Millington
- Dr Cassandra Phoenix
- Dr Emma Rich
- Dr Alison Smith
- Dr Shaun Williams
- Dr Gareth Wiltshire
Research students
- Carl Bescoby
- Annaleise Depper
- Niamh Ni Shuilleabhain
- Will Roberts
Honorary staff
- Professor Cara Aitchison, Vice Chancellor, Cardiff Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
- Professor David Andrews, Physical Cultural Studies, University of Maryland, United States
- Professor David Rowe, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia
- Professor Deborah Stevenson, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia
- Professor Kristine Toohey, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith University, Australia
- Professor Brian Wilson, School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Canada
