The School of Sport has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze Department Award in recognition of our work to support gender equality.

Lead - Sports and Recreation

Ross Cloak is an Associate Professor in Sport and Exercise Science and the Head of the Sport and Physical Activity Research Centre (SPARC). His research focuses on how sports science can be applied to improve athlete health and performance. With experience as a practitioner in combat sports, soccer, and endurance sports, Dr. Cloak’s current work includes altitude training in combat sports, the use of virtual reality technology in elite soccer, and return-to-play analysis in sport.

PhD Supervisors

Matthew Wyon is a Professor in Exercise Physiology and leader of the Performance Enhancement Research Cluster. His main focus is on the performance demands of dance and how it affects the health and well-being of dancers. He is part of an international research group that includes PhD students from across the globe looking at different dance genres from a physiological and biomechanics perspective.

Amy is currently a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and School Sport, and Inclusivity Lead for the School of Sport. She is currently the principal investigator for an Early Career Research Fellowship which is exploring the nature of belonging, engagement and self-confidence from the student perspective, driven by a strong passion for equality, diversity, inclusion and equitable teaching practices. She has published the findings of a mindfulness intervention programme with global majority students and based on her previous roles as Head of PE and Head of House in the primary/secondary school sectors, she is currently writing two projects up on the back of completing her Doctorate in Education: a conceptualisation of quality in physical education teaching, and a mixed methods approach to understanding physical education teachers constructs of quality across a career.

Amy Bywater, Lecturer in Physical Education

Dr Nick O'Leary has been a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and School Sport at the University of Wolverhampton for 23 years. Nick has three research areas of interest. Firstly, how teachers’ past and current socialisation experiences influence their teaching of Physical Education. Secondly, the issues teachers and coaches face in learning to use game-based approaches in Physical Education and sports coaching. Finally, the influence neoliberal performativity has on the working lives of Physical Education teachers.

“My research is underpinned by a focus on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. My main research interests are exploring the experiences of women working in male-dominated spaces. I have recently published a co-authored chapter on the transition from women's amateur to semi-professional football. Previous work includes research on female football officials and sex segregation in football.”

Alison Forbes,  Senior Lecturer in Sport Sociology

Gavin Ward is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Wolverhampton and a leading member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion research theme within the Sport and Physical Activity Research Centre (SPARC). The theme is focused on research that positively impacts social justice in relation to (dis)ability, gender, age, class, race and ethnicity. Gavin has recently completed a £40k research project for British University and Colleges Sport (BUCS) to explore Race and Equality within university sport and physical activity provision.   Recommendations from this UK-wide research are now in the process of being implemented by BUCS.  Gavin Supervises a range of research students across a range of subject areas including health, psychology and sport. These include full-time, part-time and professional doctorate students.