Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson

University of Lincoln · School of Sport and Exercise Science

In many ways, autoethnography represents a challenge to some of the very foundations and key tenets of much social science research in its exhortation explicitly to situate and “write in” the researcher as a key player—often the key player—within a research project or account, as illustrated by the opening excerpt from my autoethnographic account o...

Introduction Over the past twenty-five years the sporting body has been studied in a myriad of ways including via a range of feminist frameworks (Hall 1996; Lowe 1998; Markula 2003; George 2005; Hargreaves 2007) and gender-sensitive lenses (e.g. McKay 1994; Aoki 1996; Woodward 2008). Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely enga...

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under‐realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a power...

Exercise-based rehabilitation forms a key part of the UK National Health Service patient-care pathway for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Only around half of all eligible patients attend core CR, however, with social inequalities affecting participation. Few qualitative studies have explored in-depth the key factors influencing engagement with CR, spe...

The National Health Service (NHS) cardiac rehabilitation patient care pathway has remained largely unchanged for many years despite, on average, half of all eligible patients declining to engage. To investigate reasons for non-engagement, we explored the experiences of ten cardiac patients who participated in cardiac rehabilitation, dropped out, or...

Given their salience in many sports and physical cultures, it is surprising that the practices, processes and production of intercorporeality and ‘doing together’ remain under-explored from a sociological perspective. The ongoing achievement of ‘togethering’ can be particularly important for the embodied partnership between a visually impaired (VI)...

As has recently been highlighted, despite the prevalence of methodological “confessional tales” in ethnography generally, the challenges of undertaking ethnographic research specifically in institutional sports settings remain underexplored. Drawing on data from a 3-year ethnographic study of competitive swimming in the United Kingdom (UK), here we...

This chapter explores the “thorny issue” of engaging in reflexivity in sensory ethnographies and autoethnographies, considering why reflexivity is so important. Drawing on the authors’ experiences of undertaking sensory ethnographic studies of sports and physical cultures, and of the British army, it considers the role of reflexivity in this resear...

Background Cardiac events can be serious and life-changing. Whilst the physical or bodily (corporeal) effects of a cardiac event are well-researched, little research investigates psychosocial impacts, especially when the two recovery trajectories differ. Aim Using findings from a study of socio-cultural influences on exercise and health along the...

Many experienced runners consider the use of wearable devices an important element of the training process. A key techno-utopic promise of wearables lies in the use of proprietary algorithms to identify training load errors in real-time and alert users to risks of running-related injuries. Such real-time ‘knowing’ is claimed to obviate the need for...

In the UK coronary heart disease is one of the biggest causes of morbidity and mortality. Despite this, there are inequalities in health care provision and access, particularly related to women, people from black, Asian, or minority ethnic backgrounds, and people with low socio-economic status. For example, women are likely to be diagnosed much lat...

Introduction: This study assesses the effectiveness of an integrated lifestyle service (One You Lincolnshire), designed to assist individuals with long-term health conditions to manage unhealthy behaviours. The intervention supports weight loss, healthy eating, physical activity, alcohol reduction and smoking cessation for residents from the most d...

There are many complex and varied impacts of changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic on ‘afflicted bodies’ during attempts to rehabilitate following a serious health event, such as a cardiac event. This chapter draws on ethnographic research, which overlapped with the first wave of the pandemic, to investigate socio-cultural influences on embo...

The study was undertaken to explore the experiences of older adults and service providers in a 22 settings-based health promotion initiative in a football club. We conducted semi-structured 23 interviews with 10 older adults attending an ‘Extra Time Hub’ and two staff delivering the 24 initiative. Our reflexive thematic analysis generated six theme...

The study was undertaken to explore the experiences of older adults and service providers in a 22 settings-based health promotion initiative in a football club. We conducted semi-structured 23 interviews with 10 older adults attending an ‘Extra Time Hub’ and two staff delivering the 24 initiative. Our reflexive thematic analysis generated six theme...

Following developments in educational discourse more broadly, learning discourses in youth sport have been shaped by outcome-based and instrumental goals of developing useful life-skills for ‘successful’ lives. There is, however, a need to expand such traditional understandings of sport-based youth development, which we undertook by exploring exist...

The partnership between a visually impaired runner (VIR) and sighted guide runner (SGR) constitutes a unique sporting dyad. The quality of these partnerships may profoundly impact the sport and physical activity (PA) experiences of visually impaired (VI) people, yet little is known about the experiences of VIRs and SGRs. This study aimed to explore...

Introduction: Within the sociology of sport, phenomenologically inspired perspectives on sensory embodiment have emerged in recent years. This corpus includes investigations into the senses in water-based sports such as scuba diving (Merchant, 2011), performance swimming (Allen-Collinson et al., 2021; McNarry et al., 2021) and in land-based sports...

Despite considerable growth in understanding of various aspects of sporting and exercise embodiment over the last decade, in-depth investigations of embodied affectual experiences in running remain limited. Furthermore, within the corpus of literature investigating pleasure and the hedonic dimension in running, much of this research has focused on...

Introduction: Many unhealthy behaviours such as tobacco smoking, poor diet, harmful alcohol use, and physical inactivity tend to group. In England, around a quarter of people are engaged in three or more unhealthy behaviours, contributing to a higher risk of ill health. Interventions, known as integrated lifestyle services (ILS), encourage sustaine...

Contributing to current sociological concerns with embodiment, and embodied learning, this chapter explores the lived experience and social ‘production’ of endurance in two sporting life-worlds of cross-country and trail running. We employ the theoretical framework of sociological phenomenology to investigate and analyse data from three autoethnogr...

The French existentialist philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, long ago signalled the potentially empowering force of outdoor exercise and recreation for women, drawing on feminist phenomenological perspectives. Feminist phenomenological research in sport and exercise, however, remains relatively scarce, and this article contributes to a small, develop...

This chapter utilizes sociological phenomenology to investigate intercorporeality, intersubjectivity, and sensoriality in leisure swimming, as experienced by mothers with their pre-school aged children. Data from two research studies highlighted salient elements of such experiences, including a shift in women’s intentionality from the self to their...

In recent years, the role of self-tracking technologies has been investigated , debated and critiqued within qualitative research circles. The principal means by which self-tracking technologies seek to promote health-related behaviours and behaviour change is through the use of 'nudges'. Despite the increasing prevalence of nudge-style modes of bo...

A rich and multi-stranded sociology of sporting embodiment has begun to emerge in recent years. Calls have been made to analyze more deeply not only the sensory dimensions of lived sporting bodies but also the values prevailing within particular physical–cultural worlds. This article contributes to a small, developing research corpus by employing t...

Calls to address concerning evidence surrounding mental health and wellbeing in doctoral researchers have grown internationally in recent years. Adopting an ecological systems approach, this article explores doctoral researchers’ perspectives on what influences mental health and wellbeing in early-stage doctoral research. Forty-seven doctoral resea...

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning of academic interest in sporting embodiment, which incorporates sociological and phenomenological investigations into the sensory dimension of sports and physical cultures. In this invited seminar presentation, I explore how those with asthma experience and make sense of sensory experience during sports...

Introduction This study aimed to explore qualitatively the psychological experience of recovery from relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). More specifically, it sought to understand: how RED-S is experienced from a psychological perspective; sources of psychological conflict in the ongoing management of energy availability (EA); and athlete...

Abstract Introduction and Objectives South Asian individuals living with asthma in the UK are more likely to experience excess morbidity and increased hospitalisation rates than any other ethnic group. Prevention is an integral part of self- management (Pinnock, 2015). Failure to adhere to prescribed regimens is common amongst this population. This...

In recent years, a growing corpus of sociological work has developed, drawing influence from existential phenomenology, and seeking to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the often underexplored, and ‘mundane’ elements of sporting experience. Pain is, all-too-often, one of those mundane elements of sports and ‘serious’ exercise partic...

Introduction and Objectives South Asian individuals living with asthma in the UK are more likely to experience excess morbidity and increased hospitalisation rates than any other ethnic group. Prevention is an integral part of self- management (Pinnock, 2015). Failure to adhere to prescribed regimens is common amongst this population. This study in...

New forms of neoliberal femininity create demanding horizons of expectation for young women. For talented athletes, these pressures are intensified by the establishment of dual-career discourses that construct the combination of high-performance sport and education as a normative, ‘ideal’ pathway. The pressed time perspective inherent in dual-caree...

As recently highlighted, despite a burgeoning field of sensory ethnography, the practices, production and accountability of the senses in specific social interactional contexts remain sociologically under-explored. To contribute original insights to a literature on the sensuous body in physical-cultural contexts, here we adopt an ethnomethodologica...

Despite a burgeoning corpus of qualitative studies of sport and physical cultures, in-depth and embodied investigations of those requiring sustained engagement with ‘endurance work’ remain relatively under-developed. These physical cultures are sociologically interesting as they often demand of practitioners intense commitment in terms of time, ene...

Despite a burgeoning corpus of qualitative studies of sport and physical cultures, in-depth and embodied investigations of those requiring sustained engagement with ‘endurance work’ remain relatively under-developed. These physical cultures are sociologically interesting as they often demand of practitioners intense commitment in terms of time, ene...

In this presentation, we delineate key elements of the sociological phenomenological approach. Using examples drawn from studies of physical-cultural embodiment, we consider bracketing approaches we ourselves utilised in research on: 1) performance swimming and; 2) distance running. Drawing on our experience, we offer some practical ways for appr...

The opportunities and challenges that younger, female, civilian researchers can encounter when undertaking ethnographic research with predominantly male military veterans are relatively underexplored sociologically. This is despite a growing literature on reflexivity in military studies over the past decade. To address this gap, we draw on symbolic...

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) is a syndrome of impaired health and performance that occurs as a result of low energy availability (LEA). Whilst many health effects associated with RED-S have been widely studied from a physiological perspective, further research exploring the psychological antecedents and consequences of the syndrome i...

Despite a developing literature on various facets of sporting embodiment, there is currently a research lacuna with regard to in-depth analyses of actually ‘doing’ sporting activities within specific physical cultures. In this article, we address that gap by drawing on a developing theoretical literature in sociological phenomenology to investigate...

Youth sport is habitually promoted as an important context for learning that contributes to a person’s broader development beyond sport-specific skills. A growing body of research in this area has operated within a life skills discourse that focuses on useful, positive and decontextualised skills in the production of successful and adaptive citizen...

In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that hi...

Pain has long been associated with sports participation, being analyzed variously as a physical phenomenon, as well as a sociocultural construct in sport sociological literature. In this article, the authors employ a sociological–phenomenological approach to generate novel insights into the underresearched domain of “lived” pain in competitive swim...

Pain has long been associated with sports participation, being analyzed variously as a physical phenomenon, as well as a socio-cultural construct in sport sociological literature. In this article, we employ a sociological-phenomenological approach to generate novel insights into the under-researched domain of ‘lived’ pain in competitive swimming. A...

Sport provides many youth participants with a central life project, and yet very few eventually fulfill their athletic dreams, which may lead them to disengage from sport entirely. Many studies have explored the processes of athletic retirement, but little is known about how youth athletes actually reconstruct their relationship with sport and embo...

This article contributes empirical findings and sociological theoretical perspectives to discussions of the role of community lay health workers, including in improving the health of individuals and communities. We focus on the role of the Health Trainer (HT), at its inception described as one of the most innovative developments in UK Public Health...

[Extract from Introduction] Sociologists interested in the production and reproduction of “everyday life” have focused analytic attention on a panoply of different subjects, via a range of different theoretical traditions. Despite increasingly widespread participation in recreational running in the United Kingdom (Hodgson & Hitchings, 2018) and o...

Ronkainen, N. J., Ryba, T. V., & Allen-Collinson, J. (accepted manuscript). Restoring harmony in the life-world? Identity, learning, and leaving pre-elite sport. The Sport Psychologist. Abstract: Sport provides many youth participants with a central life project, and yet very few eventually fulfil their athletic dreams, which may lead them to dise...

To date, no sociological studies of professional athletes have investigated the lived experiences of sportspeople in highly publicly-visible occupations that provide relatively few opportunities for back-stage relaxation from role demands. Drawing on findings from a British Academy-funded project examining high-profile sports workers, and employing...

In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that hi...

Following developments in European educational policy more broadly, the teaching and learning discourse in youth sport in the Nordic countries is increasingly shaped by instrumental and outcome-based frameworks where the aim of sport participation is to develop useful skills for life. From an existential perspective, this competency-based approach...

Recent years have seen a burgeoning in phenomenological research on sport, physical cultures and exercise. As editors and reviewers, however, we frequently and consistently see social science articles that claim to be ‘phenomenological’ or to use phenomenology, but the reasons for such claims are not always evident. Indeed, on closer reading, many...

In Nordic societal discourse, women are considered to have equal opportunities with men for social participation, education and career achievement. In the Finnish cultural context, “the superwoman” myth (Lietzén, Lätti, & Heikkinen, 2015) constructs Finnish women as strong, capable and independent social actors who can successfully manage career, f...

Dance provides both psychological and physical benefits, and yet many boys miss out due to societal perceptions surrounding the feminization of dance. These perceptions can lead to the bullying of boys who dance. Because dance teachers are in a unique position to engage boys in dance, it is important to investigate their perceptions. This article r...

Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical–cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, we examine here the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weath...

Our presentation links to conference themes of globalisation, change of relationships, and shifting personal values. In this era, elite sport has become more competitive than ever, with increasing pressure for adolescent athletes to specialise at a young age and prioritise athletic excellence over relationships, educational ambitions and other dime...

On Youtube at: https://youtu.be/X5eoaqMVLwA The introduction of community-based Health Trainers (HTs) in the United Kingdom (UK) has been described as one of the most innovative developments in recent Public Health policy. HTs are tasked with reducing health inequalities in disadvantaged local communities by encouraging clients to develop healthie...

Although numerous studies have examined the importance of mental toughness (MT) in sport, relatively few studies have examined mentally tough behaviours. We therefore sought to identify the indicative behaviours of elite, mentally tough mountaineers, an under-researched group, by examining participants’ experiences and perceptions. Phenomenological...

Distance runners as thermal objects: temperature work, somatic learning and thermal attunement Abstract The senses of heat have to date been under-examined, including in the sociology of sport and physical cultures. Drawing on theorizations of the senses and 'sensory work', the purpose of this article is to investigate via phenomenological sociolog...

In recent years sporting embodiment has attracted an increasing level of academic attention, including a burgeoning sociological corpus that draws influence from the existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This combination of phenomenology and sociology provides a novel framework from which to examine sporting embodiment, and challenges...

In order to address sociological concerns with embodiment and learning, in this article we explore the ‘weathering’ body in a currently under-researched physical-cultural domain. Weather experiences, too, are under-explored in sociology, and here we examine in-depth the lived experience of weather, and more specifically ‘weather work’ and ‘weather...

In order to address sociological concerns with embodiment and learning, in this article we explore the 'weathering' body in a currently under-researched physical-cultural domain. Weather experiences, too, are under-explored in sociology, and here we examine in depth the lived experience of weather and, more specifically, 'weather work' and 'weather...

In this article, following on from earlier debates in the journal regarding the ‘thorny issue’ of epochē and bracketing in sociological phenomenological research, we consider more generally the challenges of engaging in reflexivity and bracketing when undertaking ethnographic ‘insider’ research, or research in familiar settings. We ground our discu...

The 2015 Nepal earthquake and avalanche on Mount Everest generated one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in modern times, bringing to media attention the physical-cultural world of high-altitude climbing. Contributing to the current sociological concern with embodiment, here we investigate the lived experience and social ‘production’ of end...

Exercise Referral Schemes (ERS) are programmes commonly implemented in the United Kingdom to increase physical activity levels and ‘treat’ ‘sedentary’ individuals and those diagnosed with non-communicable chronic disease. The views and interpretations of stakeholders are currently under-researched, however. This paper addresses sociologically this...

Available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAhf8bjA3WQ&feature=youtu.be The 2015 Nepal earthquake and avalanche on Mount Everest generated one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in modern times, bringing to media attention the physical-cultural world of high-altitude climbing. Contributing to the current sociological concern w...

Although numerous studies have examined the importance of mental toughness (MT) in sport, relatively few studies have examined mentally tough behaviours. We therefore sought to identify the indicative behaviours of elite, mentally tough mountaineers, an under-researched group, by examining participants' experiences and perceptions. Phenomenological...

In the ‘Western’ world, dance is generally considered a feminised activity and gender traditionally tends to be drawn along binary lines. Traditional notions of idealised gendered bodies in dance are often valorised. Psychologically, girls are expected to be passive, by unquestioningly accepting the instructions of the dance teacher, whereas boys a...

Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older...

Abstract: Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experience...

In recent years there has been a burgeoning interest in sporting embodiment, including a growing corpus of phenomenological inspired sociological analyses that draw influence from Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology. This combination of phenomenology and sociology provides a novel framework in the examination of sporting embodiment, and chall...

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0891241616680721 Drawing on sociological and anthropological theorizations of the senses and “sensory work”, the purpose of this article is to investigate via phenomenology-based auto/ethnography, and to generate novel insights into the under-researched sense of thermoception, as the lived sense of tempe...

Exploring the lived experiences of exercise and sports participation in the South Asian adult population with asthma and the subsequent effect it might have on their livelihood and condition.

In this paper, we contribute new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to the conceptualisation of occupational liminality, specifically in relation to so-called ‘teaching-only’ staff at UK universities. Here, we posit ‘occupational limbo’ as a state distinct from both transitional and permanent liminality; an important analytic distincti...

Abstract The subjective, lived elements of old age in physical activity promotion are central in defining how older people ascribe meaning to experiences of being active. Many such meanings are developed throughout the life course. From a longitudinal perspective, although continuity theory can be helpful in understanding older people’s sense of se...

The subjective, lived elements of old age in physical activity promotion are central in defining how older people ascribe meaning to experiences of being active. Many such meanings are developed throughout the life course. From a longitudinal perspective, although continuity theory can be helpful in understanding older people’s sense of self and pe...

Currently, there is scant research that investigates in-depth retired servicemen’s perceptions and experiences of ageing and being physically active, particularly in relation to retirement experiences. In this article, we employ a novel theoretical combination of figurational sociology and symbolic interactionism to explore a topical life-history o...

The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore...

Over the past 25 years, UK government policy exhortations to promote and increase exercise and physical activity levels in the population have increased in volume. In recent years, too, there has been growing sociological interest in exercise and physical activity embodiment issues, including within phenomenologically-inspired research into lived-b...

There has been something of a ‘reflexive shift’ in sociological research. Sociological researchers are increasingly encouraged to be ‘present’ within their work, and to recognize their own role in structuring the entire research process. One way to achieve this is through engagement in reflexive practice; that is, to reflect on our own values, beli...

This article contributes new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to the conceptualization of occupational liminality. Here, we posit ‘occupational limbo’ as a state distinct from both transitional and permanent liminality; an important analytic distinction in better understanding occupational experiences. In its anthropological sense, l...

Swimming and aquatic activity are fields in which gendered, embodied identities are brought to the fore, and the co-presence of other bodies can have a significant impact upon lived experiences. To date, however, there has been little research on sport and physical cultures that investigates how meanings associated with space impact upon women’s em...

Chapter 1: Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology off...

Currently, there is scant research that investigates in-depth retired servicemen’s perceptions and experiences of ageing and being physically active, particularly in relation to retirement experiences. In this article, we employ a novel theoretical combination of figurational sociology and symbolic interactionism to explore a topical life history o...

Whilst there exists a substantial literature providing abstract theorizations of sport, there is relatively sparse ethnographic research addressing the mundane practices of actually “doing sport” and specifically, “doing sport together”. To address such lacunae, this chapter offers an in-depth, phenomenologically inspired analysis of training toget...

http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5220C This chapter explores the experience of one female athlete named Bella, who was groomed and then sexually abused by her male coach during her childhood; abuse which then continued into adulthood and an ongoing intimate relationship. Bella's story is presented as an example of how sex...

See also our Youtube video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL16MFbksDM Drawing on sociological and anthropological theorizations of the senses and “sensory work”, in this paper we investigate via phenomenology-based auto/ethnography the under-researched sense of thermoception, as the lived sense of temperature. Based on ethnographic and auto-e...

Guest Lecture on Phenomenology, Asthma & Embodiment.Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, 31 May 2017

This paper, based on a qualitative research project in the UK, explores the ‘personal troubles’ encountered in the lived experience of asthma, drawing on an approach currently under-utilised in studies of asthma: vignettes. These were used as an elicitation technique in in-depth research with 19 frequent exercisers and sports participants with asth...

Our article featured in the International Sociological Association 'Senses & Society' Newsletter for Spring 2017, edited by Dr Kelvin Low

DOI: 10.1007/s11199-016-0652-8 Although research has examined alcohol consumption and sport in a variety of contexts, there is a paucity of research on gender and gender dynamics among French college students. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by examining alcohol use practices by men and women among a non-probability sample o...