Jessica Francombe-Webb
Biographic Data
| ID | 162813 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jessica Francombe-Webb |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jessica |
| FAMILY NAME | Francombe-Webb |
| SIGNATURE | FRANCOMBE-WEBB J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5058-2681 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Governing Paralympians
This paper uses Foucauldian-influenced discourse analysis to explore the governance of disability and gender in Chinese print media during the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. Drawing on 38 articles published in China Daily , a state-affiliated newspaper, this study examines the media representations of Paralympians and, more importantly, the ways in which gendered and disabled subject positions are constituted, negotiated, and regulated. The ana…
Remembering learning to play
In this article, we explore young women’s memories of their experiences with sport, physical activity, and play during their childhood. Through collective memory work – sharing, discussing, writing, and analysing sporting memories/histories – we examine (re)constructions of young women’s experiences of gendered relations of power, bodily awareness, and regulation within movement-based practices. The approach taken explores relationships between t…
Feminist theories after the poststructuralist turn
This collaborative chapter aims to entangle leisure studies with feminist work in related fields to forge broader “new materialist” connections through exploring poststructural and post-humanist questions about gender relations as they shape both leisure and knowledge practices. Our chapter is organized around several problematics that we explore through (i) the historical and disciplinary context, (ii) tensions within feminist engagement with “p…
Feminisms in Leisure Studies
This collaborative chapter aims to entangle leisure studies with feminist work in related fields to forge broader “new materialist” connections through exploring poststructural and post-humanist questions about gender relations as they shape both leisure and knowledge practices. Our chapter is organized around several problematics that we explore through (i) the historical and disciplinary context, (ii) tensions within feminist engagement with “p…
New Kinds of (Ab)normal
Academic, policy, and public concerns are intensifying around how to respond to increasing mental health problems amongst young people in OECD countries such as the UK and Australia. In this paper we make the case that public knowledge about mental health promotion, help-seeking, support and recovery can be understood as an enactment of public pedagogy-as knowledge practices and processes that are produced within and beyond formal spaces of learn…
Digital Ecologies of Youth Mental Health
In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy to examine the pedagogical modes of address (Ellsworth 1997) that are (i) produced through 'expert' discourses of mental health literacy for young people; and (ii) …
Young Girls' Embodied Experiences of Femininity and Social Class
Based on research with middle-upper class 12-13-year-old school girls, we discuss how femininities were embodied and discursively reconstructed in class-based ways. The data suggests the girls understood class antagonisms within the boundaries of neoliberal discourses of responsibilization, self-discipline, self-worth, and 'proper' conduct and choices. With social class stripped of any structural or structuring properties, instead imparted to the…
Critically Encountering Exer-games and Young Femininity
This article builds upon previous research into the Nintendo Wii game “We Cheer” through qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of young girls and their playing experiences. I argue here that this multi-layered approach is important as it allows for exploration of the nuances between representation and everyday lives, specifically when analyzing the complexity and contradictions related to the girls’ hetero-sexy embodiment and the process …
Physical Cultures Of Stigmatisation
In recent years, the increasing regulation of people's health and bodies has been exacerbated by a contemporary 'obesity discourse' centred on eating less, exercising more and losing weight. This paper contributes to the growing body of work critically examining this discourse and highlights the way physical activity and health policy directed at 'tackling' the obesity 'crisis' in the UK articulates numerous powerful discourses that operate to le…
On the Transgressive Possibilities of Physical Pedagogic Practices
Within this article, we critically reflect on the production and reproduction of knowledge(s) within the academic study of sport-a field dominated (to its detriment) by self-destructive versions of reductionist science that (subconsciously) act as insidious components of the social and economic condition that privileges "state" science and fail to do justice to the potentialities of "the physical" in overcoming social, political, and health inequ…
I Move Like You . . . But Different
Our aim in this article is to throw light on the complexity of the presence of the researcher’s body in the context of conducting research on and within biopolitical governance. To do so, we present author body-narratives derived from two separatestudies, both of which explore biopolitics and draw on an embodied methodology. These narratives point toward the corporeal contradictions of being located within a culture of reading and critiquing bodi…
The corporate constitution of national culture
Focussing on corporatized and mediated imaginings of nation – as highly political, public and pedagogic processes – we aim within this paper to address important questions of cultural identification and discursive address. Our focus is on the ubiquity of the year 1966 in popular narratives of Englishness in the immediacy of major football tournaments: connoting far more than football, we argue that the mythopoesis of 1966 – as a somewhat artifici…
Learning to leisure
Within this paper, I conceptualise practices of the body that are learnt and deployed as part of feminised body work within the cultural context of girls’ leisure. These are practices of the body that are engaged by young women in ways that allow them to (re)construct their subjectivities as well as ‘negotiate a physical sense of themselves’. Therefore, this paper begins by mapping the theoretical foundations upon which the analysis of femininity…
Wanting to be Anna
This article adds to the limited literature on coming out and on lesbians in sport by highlighting the presence of lesbian sporting celebrity on Showtime's series The L Word. Through a reading of The L Word's character/professional athlete, Dana Fairbanks, we explore the economic impetus and the racial and classed undertones of corporatized coming out narratives. We devote considerable effort to unpacking Fairbanks' articulation that she wishes t…
McKinesiology
Methods that Move
Driven by a desire to interrogate and articulate the role and place of the body in the study of sport, this paper encourages those who are incited by a richer understanding of the physical to expand and elaborate upon the fleshy figuration that guides the research projects and practices/strategies of the present. This call for papers is an opportunity to unpack the methodological impetus of “body work” (Giardina & Newman, 2011a) and to locate it …
Cruising for Olivia
This paper explores issues of sport, sponsorship, and consumption by critically interrogating the mass-mediated “coming out” narratives of professional golfer, Rosie Jones, and professional basketball player, Sheryl Swoopes. Both athletes came out publicly as gay in light of endorsements received by Olivia Cruises and Resorts—a company that serves lesbian travelers—thus marking a significant shift in the relationship between lesbian subjectivity,…
I Cheer, You Cheer, We Cheer”
Located within a cultural space situated firmly in the political, technological, and historical context of the contemporary moment and predicated on the contention that all texts are dialogic, the author reads physical cultural technologies as constituents of the powerful techniques of self-regulation and self-surveillance of the young female body. “We Cheer” acts as a discursive technology, a noncentralized capillary-like force that works to “co…
Digital Ecologies of Youth Mental Health
In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy to examine the pedagogical modes of address (Ellsworth 1997) that are (i) produced through 'expert' discourses of mental health literacy for young people; and (ii) …
New Kinds of (Ab)normal
Academic, policy, and public concerns are intensifying around how to respond to increasing mental health problems amongst young people in OECD countries such as the UK and Australia. In this paper we make the case that public knowledge about mental health promotion, help-seeking, support and recovery can be understood as an enactment of public pedagogy-as knowledge practices and processes that are produced within and beyond formal spaces of learn…
McKinesiology
Young Girls' Embodied Experiences of Femininity and Social Class
Based on research with middle-upper class 12-13-year-old school girls, we discuss how femininities were embodied and discursively reconstructed in class-based ways. The data suggests the girls understood class antagonisms within the boundaries of neoliberal discourses of responsibilization, self-discipline, self-worth, and 'proper' conduct and choices. With social class stripped of any structural or structuring properties, instead imparted to the…
Learning to leisure
Within this paper, I conceptualise practices of the body that are learnt and deployed as part of feminised body work within the cultural context of girls’ leisure. These are practices of the body that are engaged by young women in ways that allow them to (re)construct their subjectivities as well as ‘negotiate a physical sense of themselves’. Therefore, this paper begins by mapping the theoretical foundations upon which the analysis of femininity…
Cruising for Olivia
This paper explores issues of sport, sponsorship, and consumption by critically interrogating the mass-mediated “coming out” narratives of professional golfer, Rosie Jones, and professional basketball player, Sheryl Swoopes. Both athletes came out publicly as gay in light of endorsements received by Olivia Cruises and Resorts—a company that serves lesbian travelers—thus marking a significant shift in the relationship between lesbian subjectivity,…
I Cheer, You Cheer, We Cheer”
Located within a cultural space situated firmly in the political, technological, and historical context of the contemporary moment and predicated on the contention that all texts are dialogic, the author reads physical cultural technologies as constituents of the powerful techniques of self-regulation and self-surveillance of the young female body. “We Cheer” acts as a discursive technology, a noncentralized capillary-like force that works to “co…
On the Transgressive Possibilities of Physical Pedagogic Practices
Within this article, we critically reflect on the production and reproduction of knowledge(s) within the academic study of sport-a field dominated (to its detriment) by self-destructive versions of reductionist science that (subconsciously) act as insidious components of the social and economic condition that privileges "state" science and fail to do justice to the potentialities of "the physical" in overcoming social, political, and health inequ…
Methods that Move
Driven by a desire to interrogate and articulate the role and place of the body in the study of sport, this paper encourages those who are incited by a richer understanding of the physical to expand and elaborate upon the fleshy figuration that guides the research projects and practices/strategies of the present. This call for papers is an opportunity to unpack the methodological impetus of “body work” (Giardina & Newman, 2011a) and to locate it …
Physical Cultures Of Stigmatisation
In recent years, the increasing regulation of people's health and bodies has been exacerbated by a contemporary 'obesity discourse' centred on eating less, exercising more and losing weight. This paper contributes to the growing body of work critically examining this discourse and highlights the way physical activity and health policy directed at 'tackling' the obesity 'crisis' in the UK articulates numerous powerful discourses that operate to le…
Critically Encountering Exer-games and Young Femininity
This article builds upon previous research into the Nintendo Wii game “We Cheer” through qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of young girls and their playing experiences. I argue here that this multi-layered approach is important as it allows for exploration of the nuances between representation and everyday lives, specifically when analyzing the complexity and contradictions related to the girls’ hetero-sexy embodiment and the process …
I Cheer, You Cheer, We Cheer”
Located within a cultural space situated firmly in the political, technological, and historical context of the contemporary moment and predicated on the contention that all texts are dialogic, the author reads physical cultural technologies as constituents of the powerful techniques of self-regulation and self-surveillance of the young female body. “We Cheer” acts as a discursive technology, a noncentralized capillary-like force that works to “co…
Cruising for Olivia
This paper explores issues of sport, sponsorship, and consumption by critically interrogating the mass-mediated “coming out” narratives of professional golfer, Rosie Jones, and professional basketball player, Sheryl Swoopes. Both athletes came out publicly as gay in light of endorsements received by Olivia Cruises and Resorts—a company that serves lesbian travelers—thus marking a significant shift in the relationship between lesbian subjectivity,…
Wanting to be Anna
This article adds to the limited literature on coming out and on lesbians in sport by highlighting the presence of lesbian sporting celebrity on Showtime's series The L Word. Through a reading of The L Word's character/professional athlete, Dana Fairbanks, we explore the economic impetus and the racial and classed undertones of corporatized coming out narratives. We devote considerable effort to unpacking Fairbanks' articulation that she wishes t…
McKinesiology
Methods that Move
Driven by a desire to interrogate and articulate the role and place of the body in the study of sport, this paper encourages those who are incited by a richer understanding of the physical to expand and elaborate upon the fleshy figuration that guides the research projects and practices/strategies of the present. This call for papers is an opportunity to unpack the methodological impetus of “body work” (Giardina & Newman, 2011a) and to locate it …
I Move Like You . . . But Different
Our aim in this article is to throw light on the complexity of the presence of the researcher’s body in the context of conducting research on and within biopolitical governance. To do so, we present author body-narratives derived from two separatestudies, both of which explore biopolitics and draw on an embodied methodology. These narratives point toward the corporeal contradictions of being located within a culture of reading and critiquing bodi…
The corporate constitution of national culture
Focussing on corporatized and mediated imaginings of nation – as highly political, public and pedagogic processes – we aim within this paper to address important questions of cultural identification and discursive address. Our focus is on the ubiquity of the year 1966 in popular narratives of Englishness in the immediacy of major football tournaments: connoting far more than football, we argue that the mythopoesis of 1966 – as a somewhat artifici…
Learning to leisure
Within this paper, I conceptualise practices of the body that are learnt and deployed as part of feminised body work within the cultural context of girls’ leisure. These are practices of the body that are engaged by young women in ways that allow them to (re)construct their subjectivities as well as ‘negotiate a physical sense of themselves’. Therefore, this paper begins by mapping the theoretical foundations upon which the analysis of femininity…
Critically Encountering Exer-games and Young Femininity
This article builds upon previous research into the Nintendo Wii game “We Cheer” through qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of young girls and their playing experiences. I argue here that this multi-layered approach is important as it allows for exploration of the nuances between representation and everyday lives, specifically when analyzing the complexity and contradictions related to the girls’ hetero-sexy embodiment and the process …
Physical Cultures Of Stigmatisation
In recent years, the increasing regulation of people's health and bodies has been exacerbated by a contemporary 'obesity discourse' centred on eating less, exercising more and losing weight. This paper contributes to the growing body of work critically examining this discourse and highlights the way physical activity and health policy directed at 'tackling' the obesity 'crisis' in the UK articulates numerous powerful discourses that operate to le…
On the Transgressive Possibilities of Physical Pedagogic Practices
Within this article, we critically reflect on the production and reproduction of knowledge(s) within the academic study of sport-a field dominated (to its detriment) by self-destructive versions of reductionist science that (subconsciously) act as insidious components of the social and economic condition that privileges "state" science and fail to do justice to the potentialities of "the physical" in overcoming social, political, and health inequ…
Young Girls' Embodied Experiences of Femininity and Social Class
Based on research with middle-upper class 12-13-year-old school girls, we discuss how femininities were embodied and discursively reconstructed in class-based ways. The data suggests the girls understood class antagonisms within the boundaries of neoliberal discourses of responsibilization, self-discipline, self-worth, and 'proper' conduct and choices. With social class stripped of any structural or structuring properties, instead imparted to the…
New Kinds of (Ab)normal
Academic, policy, and public concerns are intensifying around how to respond to increasing mental health problems amongst young people in OECD countries such as the UK and Australia. In this paper we make the case that public knowledge about mental health promotion, help-seeking, support and recovery can be understood as an enactment of public pedagogy-as knowledge practices and processes that are produced within and beyond formal spaces of learn…
Digital Ecologies of Youth Mental Health
In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy to examine the pedagogical modes of address (Ellsworth 1997) that are (i) produced through 'expert' discourses of mental health literacy for young people; and (ii) …
Feminist theories after the poststructuralist turn
This collaborative chapter aims to entangle leisure studies with feminist work in related fields to forge broader “new materialist” connections through exploring poststructural and post-humanist questions about gender relations as they shape both leisure and knowledge practices. Our chapter is organized around several problematics that we explore through (i) the historical and disciplinary context, (ii) tensions within feminist engagement with “p…
Feminisms in Leisure Studies
This collaborative chapter aims to entangle leisure studies with feminist work in related fields to forge broader “new materialist” connections through exploring poststructural and post-humanist questions about gender relations as they shape both leisure and knowledge practices. Our chapter is organized around several problematics that we explore through (i) the historical and disciplinary context, (ii) tensions within feminist engagement with “p…
Remembering learning to play
In this article, we explore young women’s memories of their experiences with sport, physical activity, and play during their childhood. Through collective memory work – sharing, discussing, writing, and analysing sporting memories/histories – we examine (re)constructions of young women’s experiences of gendered relations of power, bodily awareness, and regulation within movement-based practices. The approach taken explores relationships between t…
Governing Paralympians
This paper uses Foucauldian-influenced discourse analysis to explore the governance of disability and gender in Chinese print media during the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. Drawing on 38 articles published in China Daily , a state-affiliated newspaper, this study examines the media representations of Paralympians and, more importantly, the ways in which gendered and disabled subject positions are constituted, negotiated, and regulated. The ana…
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Politics (14 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (7 works) · Art (6 works)