My research
After graduating from law school at the Université de Montréal and with a Master’s in Sport Management from Brock University, I knew I wanted to conduct research that addresses social problems and inequities, both in sport and in society more broadly.
As a Master’s student and at the beginning of my PhD, I was struck by the more critical conversations happening around the sport context. Beyond just a game or leisure activity, sport is a space to study issues as varied as masculinity and gender, race and racism, colonialism, nation building and myth-making, and labour relations, opening the door for broader conversation and activism from both scholars and athletes.
Merging my interests in sport, masculinity and deviance, I decided to pursue my doctoral studies in Sociology at McGill University, looking at the issue of violence against women in professional sport. More specifically, I examined how and why players in the NBA and NFL – who as young, wealthy Black men sit at an interesting nexus of class privilege and racialized disadvantage in terms of their treatment by the criminal justice system – suffer or avoid certain legal and extra-legal sanctions following arrests for acts of violence against women.
Since completing this PhD, I have expanded my sport and violence research line to focus more broadly on how the structures of racial capitalism produce violence and harm in sports and related contexts (e.g., media, physical activity spaces, schools) especially for those marginalized by class, race, sex, and sexuality. This has led to a sole-authored book with University of North Carolina Press for a book on capitalism, violence and sports, a co-authored book with Curtis Fogel and with University of Alberta Press on spectator violence in Canadian minor hockey, and peer reviewed publications in sport, sociology, and criminology journals.
I’ve had a winding, non-traditional path in academia, with degrees in multiple fields and an interest in several different areas. This has also resulted in learning and using a variety of methods in my research, from Bayesian and frequentist regression and quantitative analysis (using R and SPSS) to qualitative interviewing and content analysis.
If any of these research themes or methods interest you, I would love to chat about potential research collaborations!
