Dr Katie Liston

Overview

Dr Katie Liston has worked in the Irish and UK higher education sectors since 1998. She completed her PhD in sociology at University College Dublin and was the first academic to examine the experiences of elite sportswomen on the island of Ireland. She joined Ulster University in 2008 as part of the teaching and research team in the social sciences of sport and she is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr Liston is a senior researcher in the Sport and Exercise Sciences Research Institute and a core member of the Centre for Sport in Society. She specialises in the analysis of the links between sport and identity from single and interdisciplinary perspectives. This work includes, but is not limited, to: the study of sports-related pain and injury; national identity and sport, including Irish-British relations past and present; and gender, which has remained an enduring theme of he work. She supervises full- and part-time doctoral researchers at Ulster University, Nottingham Trent University and Technological University of the Shannon.

Katie is co-chair of míde: an All-Island Research Consortium for Women in Sport, Health and Exercise (míderesearch.com) and she has acted as external examiner for doctoral candidates worldwide. Her work in this space supports interdisciplinary approaches to role models, allyship, leadership and gender reform, and safe sport literacy (including gender-based online abuse/harms).

Dr Liston is a former elite athlete, combining lived experience with professional insights. Her sporting background includes national and international sporting honours (in Gaelic football, rugby union, athletics and football/soccer) and wide-ranging administrative, management and coaching experience, as well as advisory roles on various strategic committees and initiatives. She is currently a member of the Safe Sport Oversight Group, which is setting the direction on a new vision for Safe Sport across the UK and Northern Ireland. In her role as a public intellectual, Katie is a regular contributor to print, online and radio outlets regarding the social significance of sport.

She is also Director of Inspire Education, the market leader in the provision of evidence-informed study skills seminars and resources to second level students on the island of Ireland.