Staying off the Straight and Narrow: A Research Odyssey

This inaugural professorial lecture outlines a personal research journey whose constant theme has been an aversion to staying on safe discursive ground.

 

Professor Jones’ particular account is placed within the wider context of research into sports coaching, which has traditionally been subject to reductionist methods and analyses. Shunning such a cyclopean approach to social phenomena, Professor Jones developed a critical sociology of coaching paying particular attention to issues of power and interaction within the coach-athlete relationship.

 

Similarly, ignoring the seductive sirens of established methodologies and publication formats, his body of work continues to search for ways to better examine and represent the social complexity of sports coaching.

The lecture goes on to discuss the value of academic originality in general, and within individual research agendas in particular.