Sport, Health, and Education Group

The Sport, Health, and Education (SHE) research group is a vibrant community of researchers in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning.

Led by Dr Thomas Leeder, The SHE research group's mission is to:

"Work collectively on research opportunities related to the broad fields of physical education, sports development and sociology, physical activity and health, alongside wider areas of impact while facilitating a supportive and inclusive research culture."

Research themes

The group’s research expertise spans across a broad range of multidisciplinary topic areas. Key research interests include:

• Motivation, self-perception, and development in sport and educational contexts

• Mental health, wellbeing, and safeguarding across formal and informal educational spaces and workplace settings

• Professional learning and development of sport and education practitioners

• Health and physical activity promotion in children and young people

• Gender and sexuality in sport and educational contexts

• Curriculum design and individuals’ experiences of physical education and sport coaching

• Elite sporting transitions and performance sport operations

• Community project and intervention impact, monitoring, and evaluation

To explore these topic areas and beyond, the group’s members draw upon a wide range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research approaches through the collection and analysis of primary and/or secondary data.

The SHE research group is also a member of the European Network of Sport Education (ENSE), enabling pan-European opportunities and collaborations on projects, initiatives, and grant applications.

Our projects

The Sport, Health, and Education (SHE) research group has a broad range of research activities and projects that current staff and postgraduate research students undertake. The SHE research group is open to building internal and external relationships with partner organisations and groups to produce meaningful and impactful research.

Group members have received funding from several high-profile research councils (e.g., British Academy, Economic and Social Research Council) and have engaged in local and international consultancy-based projects with large scale organisations across the sport, health, and education sector, including:

• The Department for Education

• Sport England

• British Orienteering

• The Football Association

• Spanish High Council of Sports

Alongside applications to national/international research funding opportunities, bespoke requests and projects, we also operate a MSc student scholarship scheme which provides organisations with a cost-effective way to conduct research, delivery and/or monitoring for small scale projects. This usually involves hosting a highly qualified postgraduate student within your organisation for up to 20 hours per week in return for funding their tuition fees. The student is supervised and supported by an experienced researcher of the SHE group.

If you are an academic, practitioner, or any organisation who is interested in collaborating with the SHE research group in some capacity please email Dr Thomas Leeder, the group lead.