Dr Laura Purdy

Profile

Research Interests

Laura’s research interest in sports coaching stemmed from her involvement in the sport of rowing. Her work with elite coaches and athletes in several countries (Canada, New Zealand and Ireland) led her to consider the interactions between coaches, athletes and administrators and their contribution to the coaching climate. This scholarship drew attention to power and interaction in the coaching process, coaches’ pedagogical actions and identity construction.

Laura’s subsequent interactions with coaches and athletes led her to consider the various conditions and contexts in which elite/professional coaches and athletes/players operate. As such, her recent projects focus on welfare, representation and advocacy of sport workers (e.g. coaches, athletes/players, etc.) in diverse European contexts.

• The Basics: Sports Coaching
• Analytical attractions and the techno-continuum: Conceptualising data obsessions and consequences in elite sport
• Changing it up: Implications of mid-season coach change on basketball players’ career and professional identities
• Coaches as sport workers: Professionalagency within the employment context ofelite European basketball.
• In Protection of Whose “Wellbeing?” Considerations of “Clauses and A/Effects” in Athlete Contracts