November 25, 2016
10:00am – 11:30am
PL 600F

Questions of fair play were among the many concerns that emerged in the lead up to the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Scandals about alleged corruption and systematic doping plagued athletes training in both Russia and Kenya. With the suspension of the hyperandrogenism regulations, which set a threshold for testosterone levels for competitors in women’s events, there were also expressed concerns about whether or not South African 800-meter runner Caster Semenya had an unfair advantage over her competitors. This research presentation examines the enduring politics—geopolitical, classed, gendered, and postcolonial—of attempts to regulate fair play through the policing of athletes’ bodies. It also considers new techno-scientific dimensions of these politics, which have become visible in recent scandals. It draws upon qualitative and archival data collected by Dr. Henne in Australasia, Europe, and North America, including interview data with nearly 200 participants, observations of regulatory policy meetings and sport-specific events, and archival research at the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.

Kathryn (Kate) Henne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo and a fellow of the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow at RegNet, where she worked for five years after completing her Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses the how technology and law interface with social inequality in practice, focusing primarily on the growing use of biometric technologies of regulation. She has studied these issues in the contexts of sport and physical culture, drug regulation, post-incarceration, and social assistance delivery.

For more information, please contact Zachary Spicer.