Janelle Joseph, PhD

Associate Professor, Health Sciences and Sport Management

Janelle Joseph is an internationally recognized and award-winning storyteller and scholar committed to disseminating knowledge about racial justice, health, and sport.

Dr. Joseph is the Founder and Director of the IDEAS Research Lab, which focuses on Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity, and Anti-racism in Sport. Dr. Joseph is devoted to seeing graduate students and early career researchers flourish in community-based research using an embodied decolonial praxis lens. Dr. Joseph’s nation-leading scholarship, including over $4 million in research grant funding, over 50 articles and book chapters, and three books related to social justice, helps to answer the question: “What new health, sport, and recreation policies and practices might emerge if we focused less on including particular ‘kinds of people’ and more on removing the structural, cultural, and administrative barriers that currently shape our movement cultures and ambitions?

Dr. Joseph’s work is situated at the intersection of Black Studies, Health Sciences and Sport Management to enable storytelling about uninhibited joy, abiding colonialism, and steadfast resistance of racialized peoples.

  • Racial Justice, Health, and Sport: Physical activities as a means to enhance personal and community health and wellbeing.
  • Global Indigeneity and Diasporas: Leisure, martial art, and dance practices for connections to land, homelands, and new homes/identities.
  • Embodied Knowledge and Leadership: Entrepreneurship and embodied leadership, leveraging body knowledge to enhance communication and confidence.

PUBLICATIONS (last 5 years)

Joseph, J. (2024). Listen, Tell, Show: Recreation and the Black and Decolonial Storytelling in Sport and Physical Culture Research. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 48(1-2), 51-69.

Joseph, J., Pennock, K. & Brown, S. (2024). Black Hair is a Safe Sport Issue!: Black Aesthetics, Access, Inclusion, and Resistance. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10.1123/ssj.2023-0204

Hamdonah, Z. & Joseph, J. (2024). Indigenous Dance, Cultural Continuity, and Resistance: A Netnographic Analysis of the Palestinian Dabke in the Diaspora. Media Culture and Society.

Joseph, J. & Bain, N.* (2024). Leisure as Black Survival: Ballroom, Vogue and Black Queer and Trans+ Activism in Canada, Leisure/Loisir.

McKenzie, B.*, Joseph, J., & Razack, S.* (2023). Whiteness, Canadian university athletic administration, and anti-racism leadership: ‘A bunch of white haired, white dudes in the back rooms’Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, & Health, 16(2), 197-212

McKenzie, A.I.* & Joseph, J. (2023) Whitewashed and Blacked Out. Counter-Narratives as an Analytical Framework for Studies of Ice Hockey in Canada. Sociology of Sport Journal.

Peers, D., Joseph, J., Chen, C., Fawaz, N.*, Tink, L., Eales, L., Bridel, W. Hamdon, E.., Carey, A. & Hall, L. (2023). An Intersectional Foucauldian Analysis of Canadian National Sport Organisations’ ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion’ (EDI) policies and the reinscribing of injustice. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. 15(2) 193-209.

Joseph, J. Tajrobehkar, B., Hamdonah, Z.*, & Estrada, G.*, (2022). Racialized Women in Sport in Canada: A Scoping Review. Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

Peers, D., Joseph, J., McGuire-Adams, T., Eales, L., Fawaz, N.*, Chen, C., Hamdon, E., Kingsley, B., (2022). We become gardens: Intersectional methodologies for mutual flourishing. Leisure/Loisir 47(1), 27-47.

Kriger, D., Keyser-Verrault, A., Joseph, J., & Peers, D. (2022). The Operationalizing Intersectionality Framework, Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 16(4), 302-324.

Joseph, J., McKenzie, A.I.* (2022). Black Women Coaches in Community: Promising Practices for mentorship in Canada. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

McGuire-Adams, T., Joseph, J. Eales, L., Peers, D., Bridel, W., Hamdon, E., & Chen C. (2022). Awakening to elsewheres: Collectively restorying embodied experiences of (be)longing. Sociology of Sport Journal 39(4), 313p-322.

Joseph, J. & Kerr, E.* (2021). Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures, Somatechnics, 11(3), 413–431.

Ashdown Franks, G.,* & Joseph, J. (2021). Mind your business and leave my rolls alone: A Case study of fat Black women runners’ decolonial resistance. Societies 11(95), 1-17

Balter, A-S., Gores, D., van Rhijn, T. Katz, J, Kassies, I. Gleason, M. & Joseph, J. (2021) An outcome evaluation of a professional development opportunity focusing on sexuality education for early learning professionals. eceLINK, 5(1), 18-32.

  • 2023 Canada’s Top 100 Black Women to Watch of 2023 (Canada International Black Women Excellence)
  • 2023 Research Fellow, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport
  • 2023 Emerging Leisure Scholar Award, Canadian Association of Leisure Studies
  • 2022 Elected Member, Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists
  • Co-Editor, Globalizing Sport Studies Book Series, Manchester University Press
  • Past President, Black Canadian Studies Association
  • Member, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport
  • Committee Member, Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport
  • Research Impact Committee Member, Canadian Women and Sport

Dr. Joseph is recruiting graduate students for paid research opportunities, as well as thesis and dissertation supervision.

Dr. Joseph is recruiting undergraduate students for research course work.