Publications
Below are a selection of my most important academic contributions, which you’re welcome to download.
Join the member area
To access videos, seminars, talks and other useful content from The Immersive Research Consultant, click the sign up button below.
Access member-only content for just £2 a month
This small fee helps me cover the running costs of the website. You’ll have access to hours of content about social science, teaching, supervision and career development along with monthly live sessions. Plus, you can suggest topics for future videos.
Filter Tags
- Active 1
- Amateur 1
- Anti-violence 1
- Athletes 1
- Becoming 2
- Behaviour Change 1
- Biology 1
- Body 1
- Boxing 8
- Brain Damage 1
- Campaign 1
- Combat Sports 2
- Competence 1
- Concussion 1
- Consent 1
- Definitions 1
- Detachment 2
- Drugs 1
- Embodiment 2
- Empowerment 1
- Ethnography 6
- Excitement 1
- Exclusivity 2
- Fans 1
- Fighting 7
- Globalisation 1
- Health 1
- Hegemony 3
- Higher Education 3
- Ice Hockey 1
- Ideology 2
- Immersive Research 9
- Injury 1
- Insider 2
- Interaction 1
- Involvement 2
- Kinetic Learning 1
- LFHV 1
- Learning 4
- Lecturing 3
- Love Fighting Hate Violence 1
- Male Preserve 2
- Martial Arts 3
- Masculinity 7
- Men 2
- Men's Health 1
- Mimetic 2
- Money 1
- Movement 1
- Nottingham Panthers 1
Myths and Reality Building
How do myths become real? This paper explores that question in relation to boxing, and a short video overview accompanies it.
Communicating consent in sport. Paper discussion with Dr. Alex Channon
Consent in sport is under-theorised and under-evidenced. In this video, Alex and I discuss our process for pulling research together on the topic. It's taken us over a decade of chatting, thinking and formally collecting data to write up. We think there’s a lot to be learned from understanding how we work together.
The fog soon clears: Brain injuries in boxing
Boxing is ‘all about bodies’; beautiful bodies, broken bodies and, sometimes, brain-damaged bodies. And while a lot of research has explored the physiological side of ‘punch drunk’ syndrome, far less work has attempted to consider how boxers experience brain injuries.
The 'male preserve' thesis: Sporting culture and men's power
In exposing the inequalities enshrined within sports culture, along with the manifold dangers endured by boys and men in the stakes of ‘proving’ masculinity in and through sport, this body of scholarship placed the potentially harmful nature of the masculinity–sport relationship firmly into the academic discourse on sport and society.
Drugs and supplements in amateur boxing
This research, which is based on the thoughts and experiences of coaches, athletes, officials and others involved in amateur boxing, explores the use of recreational drugs, supplements and performance-enhancing drugs in the sport.
Sports violence and society
This chapter outlines an approach to classroom teaching that makes use of physical movement alongside more traditional lecturing methods when delivering lessons on abstract theoretical material. It develops the notion of embodied learning as a ‘physical metaphor’, outlining some examples of this practice that we have used in our recent work with a class of first year undergraduates.
Becoming a decent man
During the ten or so years that I’ve been involved in boxing I’ve seen countless people change their bodies, behaviours and performances of self. For many, this has been neatly understood as a simple process of becoming a boxer.
In large part, such ‘becoming’ involves moving from pugilistic newcomer towards a relatively comfortable embodiment of the physical and emotional grammars that are commonplace within boxing subcultures.
Doing public sociology in the classroom
Within this chapter I explore the manner in which public sociology (Burawoy, 2004) might be usefully employed to enhance teaching and learning.
Moving lessons
This chapter outlines an approach to classroom teaching that makes use of physical movement alongside more traditional lecturing methods when delivering lessons on abstract theoretical material. It develops the notion of embodied learning as a ‘physical metaphor’, outlining some examples of this practice that we have used in our recent work with a class of first year undergraduates.
Teaching in turbulent times
The title of this book maps the key drive of this innovative and timely edited collection. This is an important and well-crafted book by early educationalists and researchers Dr. Christopher R. Matthews, Dr. Ursula Edgington and Dr. Alex Channon. The editors and contributors care deeply about the power of teaching and learning; the pages are fired up with critical pedagogical approaches to spark the imagination.
On (not) becoming a boxer
Critics of the Chicago School’s early adoption of immersive qualitative research methodologies claimed they were breaking down an important distance between researcher and participant. These initial arguments were usually couched in the dichotomous comparison of objectivity vs subjectivity. And while the debate has shifted since these early forays, there is still a requirement for researchers to explore the position they occupy in relation to the people they are attempting to understand.
Love Fighting Hate Violence: An anti-violence programme
This chapter outlines the Love Fighting Hate Violence (LFHV) project; an anti-violence initiative aimed at inspiring reflection and generating pedagogical interventions within martial arts and combat sports.
Understanding sports violence – revisiting foundational explorations
Within this paper, we discuss the importance of attending to definitions of ‘violence’. Through a return to a selection of important foundational works, we attempt to unpack the fundamental meanings of violence in a general sense, and sport violence in particular.
‘It’s only sport’ – the symbolic neutralisation of ‘violence’
Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury – a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly ‘violent’ confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do.
Study a PhD with Dr. Christopher R. Matthews
I specialise in conducting and supervising immersive research, but I’m keen to discuss various projects and research methods with prospective students as well.