Simone Fullagar Lecture

2015 Shaw-Mannell Leisure Research Award winner Professor Simone Fullagar joins us for a public lecture

Simone Fullagar moved from Griffith University, Australia in 2014, to take up the inaugural position of Chair in Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Bath, UK. Simone is an interdisciplinary sociologist who undertakes qualitative research into the gendered formation of leisure practices, health discourses and emotional well-being. Her work applies feminist post-structural ideas to the analysis of active living policy, women’s narratives of depression and recovery, healthy lifestyles, inequality and diverse family practices & the embodiment of alternative physical cultures (from cycle tourism, parkrun to roller derby). Simone was previously the President of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies (ANZALS).

Lecture abstract

Embodied minds and gendered lives: Leisure practices as sites of social transformation

Alongside key social determinants such as income, housing, freedom from violence and discrimination, the World Health Organization has identified the impact of physical inactivity and rising mental health ‘disorders’ for women’s wellbeing. Drawing upon research into women’s everyday leisure practices and embodied wellbeing, I offer a feminist perspective on the material, affective and discursive forces that shape ‘freedom’ within advanced liberalism. In contrast to the assumption that freedom is the precondition for leisure, I consider the ‘conditions of possibility’ that shape gender practices, identities and injustices through leisure. In this sense leisure and wellbeing are constituted through a paradoxical social relation - contributing to the regulation of biocitizens and fuelling social transformation through different desires, bodies, and resistance.

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Please register, all are encouraged to come for the lecture (3-4 p.m.) and reception (4-5 p.m.).