Background

I’ve been a sports editor for both the University of Calgary and the University of Victoria’s student newspapers. I’ve created podcasts, most notably Body Paragraphs which can be found on Spotify, I’ve blogged about, and been consumed by sport my entire life. My journey into sport scholarship came about purely by chance while working as a TA at the University of Victoria’s History department pursuing an MA in French history. I was able to apply the methodological and theoretical concepts I was learning in my Master’s degree to the study of sport, which was a revelation for me. After finishing a PhD, under the direction of my fantastic advisor Dr. Janice Forsyth, and teaching in British Columbia at Thompson Rivers University, I am so thrilled to be here at Brock and part of the CSC’s vibrant and growing community.

Dr. Stevens introduced me to the Centre, and I remain grateful for her introduction to it. I am so looking forward to helping the Centre grow and to lending a helping hand wherever possible.

Teaching

So far at Brock, I have been fortunate to teach SPMA 1P93 – Diversity and Inclusion in Sport Management, SPMA 1P94 – Professional Engagement for the Sport Industry, SPMA 2P06 – Sport Policy, SPMA 3P05 – Management Concepts in Non-profit Sport Organizations, and SPMA 4P97 – Advanced Analysis of the Sport Industry: Hockey.

Each of these courses has been an exciting opportunity for me, and I am fond of each for separate reasons. For some courses, it gives me the chance to have challenging discussions and allow students to consider sport from different perspectives. Others, like 3P05 for instance, allow students to be directly involved with the sporting community and forge lasting connections in the sport industry. In developing the 3P05 course I saw a great deal of wasted potential as we only focused on the conceptual side of non-profit sports. I felt that by having students work directly with non-profits they could gain valuable first-hand experience in a variety of areas that would help build skills for the future. For instance, with the North American Indigenous games, students are learning about how the governance model works of a non-profit. They’re meeting the people that fill the roles of Vice President, Secretary, director, they’re learning that those people are professionals in other fields. They’re learning these people are extremely committed, extremely capable and I think delivering the course in this way is a hell of a lot more interesting than listening to me blabber for three hours a week. Partnering with the CSC for this course seemed like a natural fit because they work with so many non-profits it allows for students to assist many sport organizations at once.

One thing that has been true since arriving at Brock though: it’s still hard to shake the feeling of ‘I am so lucky to be talking about sport each and every day.’

Research Work/Projects

Journal of Emerging Sport Studies: In 2018, Andrew Pettit, Jared Walters, and I founded an open-access journal called the Journal of Emerging Sport Studies (JESS) with the goal of providing high-quality scholarship at no cost to authors. We accept submissions from established and emerging scholars and one of the JESS’s mandates is to help people just starting their academic careers through the gruelling publishing process. JESS helps to get research to the public free of charge at no cost to the researcher. Since initial publication, we have created an open-access, manuscript publishing imprint, hosted digital symposia, produced a public-facing series of discussions and interviews called “Emerging Discourses,” and published six volumes of sport scholarship from emerging and established scholars around the globe.

Indigenous Hockey Research Network: I am so fortunate to be part of the IHRN. We are a collective of researchers dedicated to uncovering and engaging with hockey’s Indigenous past, present, and future. We aim to cultivate critical understanding of hockey’s role in Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations in Canada. Through archival research, personal interviews, data analysis, and Indigenous community-led approaches, we take up hockey as a site for community building and Indigenous empowerment, as well as a vehicle for the pursuit of reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and other Canadians.

Ice Breakers

Are you involved in any clubs/associations?

• • The North American Society for Sport History
  • The North American Society for the Sociology of Sport
  • Indigenous Hockey Research Network
  • Society for International Hockey Research

What’s your favourite TV show right now?

• • All time: The Wire
  • Right Now: Barry

What are your current hobbies/interests?

• • Playing beer league hockey and collecting CDs

What’s your favourite book?

• • Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

What’s your favourite sport or sports team?

• • Born and raised in Calgary: a tortured, devoted Calgary Flames Fan
  • Other sports: Stampeders, Jays, Raptors, TFC, Hyderabad Sun Risers

Achievements/Memorable Moments

My biggest brag is, honestly, getting a chance to be here at Brock, teaching sport every day.

Also, one time I met most of the cast of Cool Runnings. My mom used to run a Film Festival in Calgary, and my last year there I thought we should do a 25th anniversary of Cool Runnings. I told my mom I will plan a reunion for them, and we’ll have a showing at Olympic Park where the bobsled track is and she said no, this will never work. So, I just did it anyway behind her back. And sure enough, we got Doug E. Doug, who plays Sanka, we got Derice who’s played by a guy named Leon Robinson. And we got the real life Derice Bannock, Dudley Stokes and we got them all there to watch the 25th anniversary of Cool Runnings. They watched the movie at the Bob Sled Track, and I watched the Super Bowl with the three of them, as the Film Festival just happened to be on Super Bowl Sunday.