At the recent North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) annual conference, researchers from the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) were honoured with some of the highest awards in the field.
Associate Professor Tricia McGuire-Adams and Assistant Professor Janelle Joseph, along with other members of The Re-Creation Collective, won the Outstanding Sociology of Sport Journal (SSJ) Article Award for their collective piece Awakening to Elsewheres: Collectively Restorying Embodied Experiences of (Be)longing
“The work of our collective is to develop thinking, frameworks and learning tools intended to radically change the ways we think about and enact inclusion in sport, recreation and other movement cultures,” says McGuire-Adams. “It was an honour to have our research recognized with this incredible distinction.”
The paper is the first article in this field of research to take a poetic approach to transforming sport cultures, and includes both video and artwork to offer multiple access points and representations of experiences in sport, recreation community building and physical activity.
“It felt wonderful to be recognized for our co-authored work,” says Joseph, who is the founder and director of KPE’s Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity, Anti-racism in Sport (IDEAS) research lab. “We pushed the boundaries of the kind of scholarship traditionally included in the Sociology of Sport Journal and for our artistic, poetic and creative interventions to be well received tells me we need to be even more bold in our calls to do things differently in academia.”
Joseph was awarded the NASSS Research Fellowship
Joseph was also awarded the NASSS Research Fellowship – the first Black woman scholar to win this award - for her scholarship focusing on Black health, diaspora, leisure and community transformations using critical race theory.
“Being recognized as a NASSS Fellow is an important mark of achievement in my early career,” she said. “I’ve joined an esteemed group of scholars who are each known for distinct areas of scholarship and contributions to the field.
“I’m honoured to be counted among them and to supervise students who are also award winners shows the innovative work emerging from my IDEAS Research Lab.”
Daniel Uy, second from the right, won the Barbara Brown Outstanding Paper Award
Daniel Uy is a research assistant in the IDEAS research lab and current doctoral student in KPE, studying under Joseph’s supervision. He won the Barbara Brown Outstanding Paper Award for his master’s research from York University “Pride Body: Racialized Gay and Queer Men’s Physique Preparation for Canadian Pride Events.”
Uy’s explored why racialized queer men worked out prior to Pride events in the summer of 2022 in Toronto and Montreal. His research found that through building muscularity, racialized queer and gay men can obtain a type of social capital within the gay community, but may also increase the fetishization of their racialized bodies.
“These findings are important as they add a needed nuance to understanding working out, gym spaces and pressure from gay culture through the perspective of participants who have been neglected in this area of research up to this point,” says Uy, who is also working on a collaborative specialization in sexual diversity studies through the Mark S. Bonham Centre at U of T.
“Getting this award felt amazing,” says Uy, who credits Joseph with helping him prepare and submit his research for the master award over the summer. “I was grateful that the participants of my research were getting their lives and voices recognized by larger audiences, but also, it felt like I belonged and that I finally found the right faculty and discipline to highlight my work.”
For his doctoral work, Uy intends to continue researching the experiences of racialized queer people within health and fitness and wellness, with hopes of expanding the breadth and reach of his studies by researching and participating in the Gay Games 2026 in Valencia, Spain.