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Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leicester

I work on the sociology of football and football fan culture; sports identities; football spectator behaviour and policing football crowds; women and football; issues of antiracist action around football clubs; local football and local identity construction through sport; the local governance of sport; rugby union fan and football fan allegiances and identity construction through sport; the new global and commercial landscape of professional football in Europe.

I am able to supervise doctoral students in any area connected to the sociology of sport and leisure. My particular focus has been recent developments in professional football and football culture, but I am also interested in sociological questions around all sports including those around issues of race and gender, crowd behavior and management, globalisation, commercialisation, identity formation, sporting consumption, place and locality, and the impact of television on the production and consumption of sport and leisure. I am also keen on developing new socio-historical perspectives on sport and much of my recent writing has been in this area.

My research is both empirical and theoretical and I am happy to supervise students who want to examine sport and leisure in different cultures and/or who are interested in comparative studies.

Finally I am an active sports fan and enjoy connecting my academic concern with my own sporting and cultural interests.

Experience

  • –present
    Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Leicester