Sport and Civic Engagement Research Lab
Advancing democratic life and community impact through sport
What is the Sport and Civic Engagement Research Lab?
The Sport and Civic Engagement Research Lab explores how sport can serve as a platform for civic engagement and democratic participation.
Through research and community collaboration, the lab works to generate actionable knowledge and prepare students to lead meaningful change in and through sport
Democracy
Strengthening participation and collective action through sport.
Research
Generating knowledge for action and impact
Citizenry
Cultivating engaged and active members of society through sport
Our Project
Soccer Fandom & Democracy
This project examines how soccer supporter communities organize their activities as forms of collective action that extend beyond sport into broader civic life. Working with a locally active soccer supporter association, the study explores how participation in supporter culture shapes individuals’ sense of belonging, identity, and engagement with their communities. By focusing on associational structures and organizing practices, the project seeks to understand how sport fandom can serve as a pathway to sustained civic engagement.
Sport, Humanitarianism, & Climate Justice
This project examines the intersections of sport, humanitarianism, and climate injustice through the case of Oxfam Trailwalker Korea. Working in partnership with Oxfam Korea, the research explores the tensions and contradictions that emerge when sport is mobilized for humanitarian purposes in contexts where competing values and ideologies, such as ecological justice and consumer driven sport, intersect.
Discursive Analysis of Sport and the Environment
This project uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how key concepts surrounding sport and sustainability are understood and communicated in sport. Focusing on sport-related podcast platforms, the research explores how these concepts are shaped by, and sometimes detached from, broader structural forces such as capitalism, neoliberalism, and coloniality. By critically analyzing these narratives, the project seeks to understand how dominant ways of speaking about sport and sustainability can both inform and limit more meaningful approaches in practice.
Social Inequities in Youth Soccer
This project examines how social inequalities are produced and sustained within contemporary soccer in Korea, with a focus on both youth development and elite sport pathways. Drawing on studies of private coaching in youth football and the experiences of elite female players, the research explores how access and opportunity are shaped by broader social structures, including class, gendered hierarchies, and the commercialization of sport. By analyzing how resources and outcomes are unevenly distributed, the project seeks to understand how soccer both reflects and reproduces inequality, while identifying possibilities for more equitable forms of participation and development
Recent Events and Activities
Beyond the Game: Fan Interaction in the Modern Era of College Athletics
By: Reagan Faust & Brooke Riley Since the introduction of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) polici…