The subject matter of what I teach is not that important, what matters is the process by which students educate themselves. I do not teach students what to think, I teach them how to think critically. I combine an Aristotlean method of enquiry with anthropological holism to encourage students to consider the underpinnings of their basic assumptions about the way the world is and works and what they might consider doing to change their world if they find it not to their liking.

This happens through an active engagement, often in a conversational style, between my students and myself and amongst students in seminars and on the web. I do this by getting them to engage with their world, their interests, and their core beliefs and encouraging them to consistently ask what is actually going on around them. Students pursue their interests making their education more vibrant and taking me on a journey with them where I learn from them as well.

Students’ success after they graduate is the proof of how well this works as numerous students have gone on to do fully-funded research degrees, had successful early careers in their chosen fields, and completely reassessed their life goals and pursued what truly is important to them rather than what they have been told is important.

I succeed when I see students addressing their own previously unchallenged presumptions about the world and confirm or change their beliefs based on solid self-formed knowledge developed through skillful self-directed research.

My research interests are informed by a strong sense of ethical social justice that focuses on the human body, human movement and the control of space. The topics in which I am interested in are all informed by an anthropological sensibility centred upon what it means to be human. I principally do this through conducting intensive long-term ethnographic fieldwork, having done so in Cuba, Northern Ireland, Ecuador, the USA, and Wales. I research on the relationships between the individual and the state, the movement, migrations, and mobilities of various peoples, the politics of spectacle, and the dialectic relations spatialized embodiment.

Current research projects

• Football4Peace

Previous research projects

• Migratory labour of New Economic Order sport (NEOsport)

Research centres and groups

• Centre of Sport, Tourism, and Leisure Studies
• Centre for Research in Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP)
• Football4Peace (F4P)