The OU Sport & Fitness Research Cluster

The OU Sport & Fitness Research Cluster is chaired by Cluster Lead, Dr Ben Langdown and Research Convenor, Steph Doehler who support an inter-disciplinary working team of researchers investigating various areas of sport and fitness including, sports coaching, transitions in sport, strength & conditioning, athletic injury, post traumatic growth, identity, embodiment, asthma, maltreatment/abuse, sports student experiences, boxing, netball, winter sports and golf. ________________________________________________________

Click here to go to OU Sport and Fitness Team Blog

PhD Award!

Congratulations goes to Dr Karen Howells, Lecturer in Sport & Fitness, who was awarded the British Psychological Society Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology (DSEP) PhD Award which is awarded annually “to a PhD student whose thesis is regarded to be an exceptional, and innovative contribution to knowledge in the field”.  Karen’s thesis was entitled “A Qualitative Exploration of Adversarial Growth in Elite Swimmers” and was supervised by Dr David Fletcher at Loughborough University.

5th International Conference on Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise

QRSE logo  On 1-3 September 2016, Dr Helen Owton attended and presented the 5th International Conference on Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise (QRSE) at the University of Chichester, UK. She presented in the Creative Arts symposium on “Representing Taboos in Sport and Video Representation as Literature Review” drawing from the following paper:

  • Owton, H. and Sparkes, A. (2016). Sexual abuse and the grooming process in sport: Bella’s story. Sport, Education and Society. Click here.

Dr Owton presented a poster entitled “The Coolness of dance and masculinity” with colleagues (Dr Helen Clegg and Professor Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson).  Also, Helen was invited to run a Visual Methods workshop which was well received and attended.

QRSE workshop 1

The next QRSE conference is due to be held in June 2018 at The University of Toronto in Canada.