What can Narrative Theory tell us about Meaning in Sport? Prof. Kitrina Douglas (Pt1) - Meaningful Sport Series

Does elite sport culture steer athletes towards particular stories, identities, feelings and actions? How can athletes resist the dominant narratives, or should they? How can athletes find different stories that allow them to experience alternative meanings and think, feel and live differently?

Kitrina Douglas is a Professor at the University of West London (UK), a Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University (UK), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). She has been one of the pioneers in the narrative study of athletes’ lives. Her narrative typology of performance, discovery and relational narratives of sport, developed together with Dr David Carless, has been a foundation for a number of studies that have followed. In today's episode, she shares fascinating stories from her research and life as an elite athlete, and how she developed and maintained multiple self-stories that were not disrupted by successes and failures experienced in sport.

Examples of Kitrina's numerous research articles on narrative, identity and sport include:

Challenging interpretive privilege in elite and professional sport: one [athlete’s] story, revised, reshaped and reclaimed

Living, resisting, and playing the part of athlete: Narrative tensions in elite sport

Kitrina has also had an important contribution to advancing arts-based and creative qualitative research methodologies. In addition to journal articles and academic books, her work has been published in the form of films, documentaries, poems, songs, and stories. For inspiration, you can visit her YouTube channel.