Leisure Studies Conference

Professor Mowatt is a Department Head and Professor at North Carolina State University, with research and teaching focus linked to theories of race, legacies of racial violence, and colonial histories. 

His keynote is titled: A People's History and Future of Leisure Studies, Part One

You can read his abstract below:

What is leisure? Perhaps the quest to locate at an answer that so many of us, for so long has been all wrong. Instead of thinking about an answer deriving from some present-day expression of leisure that frames some hopeful future outlook of leisure, maybe it is the jaded past that has told us enough of what leisure is. Not the selective past of an un-officialized canon that includes mentions of Veblen, Piper, De Grazia, and Csikszentmihalyi (as well as others), that could then be mistakenly course corrected by inserting mentions of DuBois, Addams, Taylor, and Tuan. But the answer(s) to “what is leisure?” is evident in what has been done in the name of park land, recreational space, sport for all, and mass tourism. But the question of “what is leisure?” may not only come from an examination and presentation of past wrongs. Perhaps all we need is just enough of an analysis of the past that could inform how we could the shape of a future based on confronting how leisure has been such a tool. So, the answer to “what is leisure?” is evident in what will likely to be done to continue ways in which society is governed and society is systematized to perpetuate how leisure establishes codes of conduct, control, and beliefs. In this regard, there is no leisure-work dichotomy, as they are both tools for a form of subjugation. Leisure is of the making of the State despite our (mis)perceptions of independence and freedom. There is a need to create a criticality to consider how “the people” who are likely the most adversely impacted by those past and present harms will be wronged further. So, in pursuing an emancipatory direction in an understanding of leisure, it is of the utmost importance to adopt a moral reimagination of the conception of leisure.

Harriet is Professor and Head of Knowledge Exchange in the Centre for Innovation and Knowledge Exchange at Bath Spa University. She leads initiatives that bridge academia and industry through meaningful partnerships, supporting pathways for academics, students, and industry leaders to collaborate. 

Harriet's passionate about business, consultancy, community engagement and social impact, and enjoys cultivating partnerships that address real-world challenges. She also works at BiBO, a placemaking agency in Wiltshire, as Head of Visual Engagement. At BiBO, Harriet supports organisations and developers with public engagement. 

With a background in sociology and organisation studies and 19 years’ HE experience, Harriet’s research focuses on organisational space, artefacts, and the material world of work. She has expertise in qualitative research methods including innovative visual methodologies, specifically participant-led photography. Harriet has led research and consultancy projects with public and private sector organisations, including Argent LLP, the RFU, the Environment Agency, Stride Treglown, and ISG. Her research appears in journals including Human Relations, Organizational Research Methods, and Management Learning. Harriet was nominated ‘Woman of Influence 2024’ by The Planner Magazine, and her project with Argent LLP, ‘Picturing Places’ was shortlisted for The Planning Awards in the Engagement category. 

Her keynote is titled: Creative Connections: Creative Methods for Communities and Place-Making

You can read her abstract below:

In this keynote talk, I'll be exploring how creative methods – such as photography, art, crafting amongst others - offer powerful ways for researchers and communities to connect, collaborate, and create meaningful change. Drawing on a series of visual, community-driven research projects, and focussing on recent work with the RFU on women and girl's grassroots rugby facilities, I show how such methods enable participants to capture lived experiences, articulate hidden challenges, and imagine new possibilities for the spaces they use. Using the example of photography and visuals, I argue that creativity provides an alternative space for ownership - images become part of people’s voices, creative acts become dialogue, and community stories influence decision-making. My talk situates creative methods within the wider strategic landscape of Knowledge Exchange, demonstrating how creativity through visual data strengthens civic partnership, supports place-based impact, and aligns with HEIF priorities around inclusion, participation, and regional growth. I close by looking ahead to creative futures and introduce the new Journal of Creative Methods as a dedicated home for this kind of work, providing a place for researchers and practitioners - and those in-between! - to share and showcase creative participatory approaches to community engagement.

Dr. Briony Sharp is a Programme Leader at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), and a member of the UWS Centre for Sport, Culture and Events (CCSE). She teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and contributes to initiatives such as the Foundation Academy for school pupils. Her research uses qualitative methods to examine the social impacts of events, with interests in governance, volunteering, legacy, and critical event studies. Her PhD explored the social legacies of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, and she is currently contributing to research related to Glasgow 2026. Briony’s wider interests include the roles of leisure and events in well-being, sustainability, and long-term community outcomes. She has co-edited several volumes, including Creative Research Methods for Critical Event Studies (2024), Transforming Leisure in the Pandemic (2022), and Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity in Critical Events Studies (2018). She also serves as Treasurer of the Leisure Studies Association and Social Media Editor for the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events.

Her keynote is titled: Leisure, Governance, and the Ethics of Legacy in Challenging Times

You can read her abstract below:

In a period shaped by economic precarity, social fragmentation, and heightened scrutiny of public spending, legacy planning for large‑scale events requires fresh, considered attention. Legacy is no longer a simple promise of public good; it is an evolving ethical space where expectations of social impact and community benefit intersect with complex political and financial conditions. This keynote examines how legacy governance is changing, arguing that legacy should be viewed not as a fixed outcome but as a social contract that shapes relationships between event organisers, institutions, and the communities whose contributions make events possible.

Drawing on recent collaboration with the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games to design and write its legacy plan, the keynote highlights the value of co‑production in shaping meaningful futures. The process brought together over 140 contributors - from community groups and practitioners to public bodies and cultural and sporting organisations - to collectively define what a successful legacy should look like for Glasgow.

By exploring the politics of participation within legacy processes, the talk positions legacy as a practice grounded in transparency, reciprocity, and long‑term responsibility. It ultimately argues for legacy as a constructive, community‑centred framework for strengthening the civic role of major events.

Donna Chambers is Professor of Critical Cultural Studies at Northumbria University in Newcastle.  She is an interdisciplinary scholar who is interested in how people and places are represented in cultural heritage tourism and leisure spaces, drawing on a range of critical perspectives including postcolonial and decolonial epistemologies, critical race theory and Black feminist theory.   

Donna is an Associate Editor of Annals of Tourism Research and was a Managing Editor of Leisure Studies and remains a member of the Editorial Board.  Outside of academia she is a Trustee of Wordsworth Grasmere, and the Sunderland Empire Theatre Trust.  She is also a non-Executive Director of The Phoenix Way Northeast and Cumbria which develops capacity building programmes for Black led organisations. 

Her keynote is titled: The “warrior culture”: race, gender and the politics of leisure

You can read her abstract below:

While the field of critical leisure studies boasts a distinguished history of feminist, liberatory scholarship, it has yet to extensively problematise gender intersectionality—specifically regarding the compounded oppression of Black women due to racism and sexism. Furthermore, the broader politics of leisure remains under-researched despite some insightful interventions. In this presentation, I argue that a primary challenge for critical leisure studies scholars in this present moment, is understanding the nexus between leisure, politics and the systemic marginalisation of Black women. Specifically, my provocation is that the rise of far-right political ideologies—rooted in racism, sexism, and homophobia—pose a distinct threat to Black women. By examining what is currently deemed the ‘warrior culture’ fostered by white males in fitness clubs, I demonstrate how these leisure spaces ostensibly dedicated to health, wellbeing and ‘brotherhood’, serve as a thinly veiled camouflage for white supremacist political struggle, where leisure becomes a tool for the continued vilification and subjugation of women, and particularly Black women.

Professor Alan Tomlinson is Emeritus Professor of Leisure Studies, University of Brighton UK. He is a long-term champion of Sport and Leisure Studies, and began his academic study of leisure and sport in the mid-1970s. Initially, he studied social sciences and humanities at the University of Kent (BA in English and Sociology, 1971) and the University of Sussex (MA in Sociology, 1973; DPhil in Sociology, 1977). His doctoral research focused upon the application of critical theory to an understanding of literary forms in their socio-cultural and historical contexts. 

Alan has brought his interdisciplinary interests and expertise to bear in course development and research programmes throughout his academic career. He joined the Leisure Studies Association in the later-1970s, and has run/convened British Sociological Association Study Groups (Leisure and Recreation; Sociology of Sport). Collaborative work has been central to his research vision, and he led a Sport and Leisure Cultures research group in the UoB that became influential in many countries and universities. 

You can read his abstract below:

The LSA2026 Conference Keynote Panel is in one sense a call to arms:  Reflections on Critical Leisure Studies in Challenging Times. Times are indeed challenging when, in the USA, publishers have begun to approach authors demanding that second-runs of texts must be in part rewritten or at the very least modified. The pressure on these publishers comes from the heart of the Trump presidency, from federal investigations demanding changes of language and vocabulary, culling any mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Professor Jay Coakley describes the situation: “As publishers fear retribution, they are beginning to ask authors to comply with requests to change vocabulary”. 

Such a situation is not of course the case in the UK, but the precedent of the USA is something that none of us would have believed in pre-Trumpian times. Gender, race, ethnicity, and social class are instanced as words that will be challenged   in textbooks and syllabi. (See the BSA’s Network, Issue 151, Winter 2025, p. 33). And the publishers in the US are of course established or potential products in the UK market. Never has it been so important to identify and sustain objective yet critical analysis in our teaching, research and overall scholarship on all dimensions of social, cultural, and political life. And this includes leisure.  

The case for the continuing importance of Leisure Studies must be sustained and my reflections will recall the impact of critical theory/theories that many of us have sought to apply in our studies of the leisure sphere

Dr Utsa Mukherjee is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research in the Department of Education at Brunel University of London where he also co-leads the ‘Education, Identities and Society’ research group. He is the author of Race, Class, Parenting and Children’s Leisure (Bristol University Press, 2023) and the editor of Childhoods & Leisure (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). He is the Associate Editor of Journal of Family Studies and Schole: A Journal for Recreation & Leisure Studies Education.

His keynote is titled: Reflections on Critical Leisure Studies in Challenging Times

You can read his abstract below:

Challenging times are both about the crises of our present moment as well as the uncertainties and perils that lie ahead. They require conceptual and methodological sensitivity to the dynamic links between past, present and future. Yet, much of leisure studies remains presentist in its focus and scope, thereby hindering the potential of a critical leisure studies that can address these challenges. Notwithstanding regular references to polycrises and (inter-generational) inequity, leisure scholarship remains adult-centric and preoccupied with debates about the future without centring the voices of the young. Similarly, the presentist focus of leisure scholarship has paid insufficient attention to the role of leisure, and our resource-intensive pursuit of it, in producing environmental challenges that directly impact the future of the planet and its inhabitants. For leisure studies to be truly critical, it is not enough to leverage leisure as a lens to understand contemporary challenges, but we must at the same time interrogate leisure’s complicity in precipitating and amplifying many of those challenges. Drawing on two key areas of my research – children’s leisure and environmental transition – in this talk, I will reflect on the need for greater reflexivity and ‘connected’ approaches that go beyond presentism and methodological nationalism to reimagine a critical leisure studies equipped to meet the challenging of our times. 

Professor Caroline Scarles is Professor of Technology in Society and Vice Dean Research at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. Her research focuses on technology for social good, nature connection, wellbeing, and accessibility in arts and heritage, recreation and travel.

Professor Louise Mansfield is Professor of Sport, Health and Social Sciences, Vice Dean for Research and Co-Director of the Centre for Health and Wellbeing across the Lifecourse in the College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Brunel University London, UK. 

Dr Tarryn Godfrey is a Lecturer in Sport Development within the Department of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences and Centre for Health and Wellbeing Across the Lifecourse at Brunel University of London. She is a Department Director of Recruitment and Admissions.

Dr Utsa Mukherjee is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the Department of Education, Brunel University of London where he also co-leads the ‘Education. Identities and Society’ Research Group. 

Emma Wainwright is a Professor in the Department of Education at Brunel, with broad research interests in the geographies of education, training and welfare, and social and educational inequalities.

Professor Rasul A. Mowatt is a Department Head and Professor at North Carolina State University, with research and teaching focus linked to theories of race, legacies of racial violence, and colonial histories.

Dr Lewis Smith is a Lecturer in Marketing at Brunel University of London, with research interests in business and marketing history, corporate heritage, public and third sector marketing.

Jake Gifford is a Doctoral Researcher in the Centre for Health and Wellbeing Across the Lifecourse in the College of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences at Brunel University of London.