Fiona Mclachlan
Biographic Data
| ID | 220249 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fiona Mclachlan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fiona |
| FAMILY NAME | Mclachlan |
| SIGNATURE | MCLACHLAN F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7067-1908 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Moving from barriers to collaborative action: Supporting social change in community sport through action research with club leaders
There is a need to move from identifying and understanding the barriers and facilitators to participation in sport experienced by marginalised populations to collaborative action towards social change. This paper examines how action research grounded in sustained academic-practitioner collaboration can stimulate change processes designed to enhance inclusive practices in community sport. Through analysing the three-year action research programme …
We’re Putting All Our Eggs in the Gender Basket”: Examining the Absence of Intersectionality Within Community Sport Gender Equity
Since 1987, Australia has witnessed dedicated policies and investment aiming to increase the number of girls and women participating in community sport. Over four decades, gender equity policies and initiatives have been extensive; however, these have rarely sought to explicitly address intersectional forms of discrimination experienced by women and girls. There is also a lack of understanding of how community sports clubs respond to intersection…
Intersectionality in research on equity, diversity, and inclusion in sport: A systematic review of the literature
Research increasingly focuses on intersectionality to advance existing approaches to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in sport. Intersectionality is a complex concept that has been defined and operationalized in various ways. Using a systematic review comprising 41 peer-reviewed publications, this paper examines the extent to which and how research on EDI in sport engages with intersectional thinking and practice. The authors used three the…
Has It Never Been a Better Time to Play? Opportunity, Empowerment and Contested Terrains of Women’s Grassroots Football in Australia
The introduction of the semi-professional Australian Rules Football League for Women (AFLW) in 2017 was indicative of a broader ‘boom’ for women and girls’ sport in Australia. The ‘boom’ promised not only newly created, or enhanced, professional pathways for elite women athletes but also a commensurate change in the community sport landscape, backed by a gender equality framework, that would offer women and girls new, and supported, opportunities…
How is intersectionality being represented by Australian sports organisations? A content analysis
In the realm of critical social theory, the application of intersectionality is crucial for addressing social inequalities and advocating for social justice. Our research focuses on the growing integration of intersectionality in Australian sport systems, a development observed in government documents and sports organisations’ operational procedures. Despite this trend, challenges persist in effectively implementing intersectionality due to the c…
Old Rules for New Times: Sportswomen and Media Representation in the Covid-19 Pandemic
During the first few months of the pandemic, professional sport around the globe stopped, as competitions and leagues were cancelled, postponed, or went into hiatus while sport administrators scrambled to work out ways to reboot their product in a COVID-19 world. Sport media outlets were faced with the task of reporting on sport and filling the void for fans in the absence of any live content. This article is concerned with the content, both in q…
Enhancing social inclusion in sport: Dynamics of action research in super-diverse contexts
There are systemic and longstanding inequalities in sport participation for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) migrants. Drawing on theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy and social justice education, as well as a public sociology perspective, this paper examines the development of an action research (AR) project to support the co-creation of inclusive climates in sports clubs in CALD communities in Melbourne, Australia. We use ar…
These chicks go just as hard as us!' (Un)doing gender in a Dutch CrossFit gym
CrossFit is a relatively new fitness movement/sport, where women and men train together in the same space, performing the same athletic movements and gender equality is celebrated in CrossFit marketing, promoting equal opportunities for men and women. This paper explores how the much emphasized gender-equality narrative in CrossFit unfolds in gender performativity in a Dutch CrossFit gym. To this end, we draw from an ethnographic case study throu…
Swimming With the Bicheno 'Coffee Club: The Textured World of Wild Swimming
Wild swimming is currently experiencing a surge in popularity as people avowedly attempt to reconnect with the natural world. Previous research has positioned wild swimming as a solitary pursuit whereby individuals retreat from society to connect with or overcome nature and better themselves. This article draws on an ethnographic examination of a wild swimming group in Australia and reveals that while being in nature and personal fulfillment are …
Gendering the Coronavirus Pandemic: Toward a Framework of Interdependence for Sport
A growing body of research suggests that economic crises tend to exacerbate existing gender inequalities, particularly in the realms of paid work and political representation. Translating this to the case of sport, how and why might the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic be felt unevenly by professional female athletes and women leaders? In this essay, the authors reflect on the classic feminist critique of the gendered construction of dependenc…
Sport, Refugees, and Forced Migration: A Critical Review of the Literature
Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly pay attention to sport and physical activity as a means and context for refugee wellbeing and integration, influenced by wider political and policy concerns about forced migration. Considering this growing scholarly and policy attention, it is timely to take stock of, and critically reflect on, recent developments in this field of research. This paper offers an integrative, critical revie…
It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia
Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a…
Am I an easy unit?’ Challenges of being and becoming an activist teacher educator in a neoliberal Australian context
Over the past decades, a body of scholarship has highlighted the possibilities of critical pedagogies in Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE) (Fitzpatrick, 2018 Fitzpatrick, K. (2018). What happened to critical pedagogy in physical education? An analysis of key critical work in the field. European Physical Education Review, 1–18. doi: 10.1177/1356336X18796530[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. What happened to cr…
You Have to Play Like a Man, But Still be a Woman”: Young Female Colombians Negotiating Gender Through Participation in a Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) Organization
Colombian girls are not encouraged from playing sport due to gendered roles that idealize girls as “delicate” and reserve sport as an activity for boys. Since the early and mid-2000s girls living in two marginalized communities in Colombia have had the unique opportunity to participate in a sport for development and peace organization. Drawing on six months of ethnographic research, this paper explores how these young women are negotiating gender…
Being critical: An account of an early career academic working within and against neoliberalism
In 2014 I attended a symposium concerning Early Career Academics (ECAs) in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy. I was struck by the dominance of a particular theme at that symposium—that is, how to obtain a position and survive in academia. The aim of this paper is to use an inciting moment that occurred at this symposium as a means to confront some of the broader issues that I thought were at stake. Specifically I seek to interrog…
Introduction: Women, Sport and History in Australia and New Zealand
Raewyn Connell eloquently states that gender is not a fixed system, but a complex, historically changing, and tension-ridden structure of relationships, always open to change.1 As such, historians
Gender Politics, the Olympic Games, and Road Cycling: A Case for Critical History
The Olympics have always been a site of sexism. 1 Indeed, as Kevin Wamsley and Gertrud Pfister state, access to opportunities and rewards have been remarkably different for men and women. 2 This direct exclusion and inequality has often been attributed to the gendered structure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its policies, and as such the modern Olympics have been described as being entrenched in institutionalized sexism. 3or exa…
The Silent Game: A Critical Reading of the History of Netball in Australia
Netball is commonly cited as being the national game for females in Australia. Yet the game’s popularity is not reflected in the field of sport history in the breadth or depth of analysis compared to other sports. There are only two major published academic articles pertaining to the origins and development of netball in Australia. In this paper, these articles are critically analyzed. The analysis reveals gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies i…
Examining Sport Histories: Power, Paradigms, and Reflexivity
Book review of: Richard Pringle and Murray Phillips (eds), 'Examining Sport Histories : Power, Paradigms, and Reflexivity(Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology, 2013), pp. vii + 321, ISBN: 9781935412373
Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935–1960
In the context of the ‘obesity epidemic’, there has been widespread government and media interest in the expanding waistlines, and couch-potato lifestyles of the twenty-first-century citizens in Br
Swimming History after Deconstruction: A Queer Engagement
In this paper I make a case for history that is both deconstructive and creative. I begin from my position of “deconstructionism” and move towards queer engagement, which I argue, is a productive term that enables me to embrace deconstruction and subjective approaches to history making, without falling into the trap of writing a coherent “self ” into the text. I create an example of a fragmented swimming history to illustrate what queer engagemen…
Cohesive Narratives: Dissolving Aotearoa/New Zealand's Heroines of Water
In this paper, the biographical sporting narratives produced about a selection of New Zealand's most successful women swimmers are interrogated and analyzed. It is argued that biographical narratives, ironically, pay insufficient attention to the complexity and fluidity of ‘character’. As such, it is suggested that the interrogation of fictional characters is a useful way of exploring the cultural conditions of possibility which shape the (re)pro…
Life during wartime: Women and conflict in Afghanistan
The civil war in Afghanistan has caused women to suffer psychosomatic disorders and trauma through the loss of relatives and sons. In addition, war-widows face new economic responsibilities for their households and often have had to deal with destruction of their homes and livestock. The women are so depressed that they can no longer enjoy social functions like weddings or trust their neighbors. The only hope the women have is in their children, …
Swimming With the Bicheno 'Coffee Club: The Textured World of Wild Swimming
Wild swimming is currently experiencing a surge in popularity as people avowedly attempt to reconnect with the natural world. Previous research has positioned wild swimming as a solitary pursuit whereby individuals retreat from society to connect with or overcome nature and better themselves. This article draws on an ethnographic examination of a wild swimming group in Australia and reveals that while being in nature and personal fulfillment are …
It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia
Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a…
These chicks go just as hard as us!' (Un)doing gender in a Dutch CrossFit gym
CrossFit is a relatively new fitness movement/sport, where women and men train together in the same space, performing the same athletic movements and gender equality is celebrated in CrossFit marketing, promoting equal opportunities for men and women. This paper explores how the much emphasized gender-equality narrative in CrossFit unfolds in gender performativity in a Dutch CrossFit gym. To this end, we draw from an ethnographic case study throu…
You Have to Play Like a Man, But Still be a Woman”: Young Female Colombians Negotiating Gender Through Participation in a Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) Organization
Colombian girls are not encouraged from playing sport due to gendered roles that idealize girls as “delicate” and reserve sport as an activity for boys. Since the early and mid-2000s girls living in two marginalized communities in Colombia have had the unique opportunity to participate in a sport for development and peace organization. Drawing on six months of ethnographic research, this paper explores how these young women are negotiating gender…
Am I an easy unit?’ Challenges of being and becoming an activist teacher educator in a neoliberal Australian context
Over the past decades, a body of scholarship has highlighted the possibilities of critical pedagogies in Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE) (Fitzpatrick, 2018 Fitzpatrick, K. (2018). What happened to critical pedagogy in physical education? An analysis of key critical work in the field. European Physical Education Review, 1–18. doi: 10.1177/1356336X18796530[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. What happened to cr…
Being critical: An account of an early career academic working within and against neoliberalism
In 2014 I attended a symposium concerning Early Career Academics (ECAs) in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy. I was struck by the dominance of a particular theme at that symposium—that is, how to obtain a position and survive in academia. The aim of this paper is to use an inciting moment that occurred at this symposium as a means to confront some of the broader issues that I thought were at stake. Specifically I seek to interrog…
Gender Politics, the Olympic Games, and Road Cycling: A Case for Critical History
The Olympics have always been a site of sexism. 1 Indeed, as Kevin Wamsley and Gertrud Pfister state, access to opportunities and rewards have been remarkably different for men and women. 2 This direct exclusion and inequality has often been attributed to the gendered structure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its policies, and as such the modern Olympics have been described as being entrenched in institutionalized sexism. 3or exa…
The Silent Game: A Critical Reading of the History of Netball in Australia
Netball is commonly cited as being the national game for females in Australia. Yet the game’s popularity is not reflected in the field of sport history in the breadth or depth of analysis compared to other sports. There are only two major published academic articles pertaining to the origins and development of netball in Australia. In this paper, these articles are critically analyzed. The analysis reveals gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies i…
Has It Never Been a Better Time to Play? Opportunity, Empowerment and Contested Terrains of Women’s Grassroots Football in Australia
The introduction of the semi-professional Australian Rules Football League for Women (AFLW) in 2017 was indicative of a broader ‘boom’ for women and girls’ sport in Australia. The ‘boom’ promised not only newly created, or enhanced, professional pathways for elite women athletes but also a commensurate change in the community sport landscape, backed by a gender equality framework, that would offer women and girls new, and supported, opportunities…
How is intersectionality being represented by Australian sports organisations? A content analysis
In the realm of critical social theory, the application of intersectionality is crucial for addressing social inequalities and advocating for social justice. Our research focuses on the growing integration of intersectionality in Australian sport systems, a development observed in government documents and sports organisations’ operational procedures. Despite this trend, challenges persist in effectively implementing intersectionality due to the c…
Enhancing social inclusion in sport: Dynamics of action research in super-diverse contexts
There are systemic and longstanding inequalities in sport participation for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) migrants. Drawing on theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy and social justice education, as well as a public sociology perspective, this paper examines the development of an action research (AR) project to support the co-creation of inclusive climates in sports clubs in CALD communities in Melbourne, Australia. We use ar…
Cohesive Narratives: Dissolving Aotearoa/New Zealand's Heroines of Water
In this paper, the biographical sporting narratives produced about a selection of New Zealand's most successful women swimmers are interrogated and analyzed. It is argued that biographical narratives, ironically, pay insufficient attention to the complexity and fluidity of ‘character’. As such, it is suggested that the interrogation of fictional characters is a useful way of exploring the cultural conditions of possibility which shape the (re)pro…
Life during wartime: Women and conflict in Afghanistan
The civil war in Afghanistan has caused women to suffer psychosomatic disorders and trauma through the loss of relatives and sons. In addition, war-widows face new economic responsibilities for their households and often have had to deal with destruction of their homes and livestock. The women are so depressed that they can no longer enjoy social functions like weddings or trust their neighbors. The only hope the women have is in their children, …
Cohesive Narratives: Dissolving Aotearoa/New Zealand's Heroines of Water
In this paper, the biographical sporting narratives produced about a selection of New Zealand's most successful women swimmers are interrogated and analyzed. It is argued that biographical narratives, ironically, pay insufficient attention to the complexity and fluidity of ‘character’. As such, it is suggested that the interrogation of fictional characters is a useful way of exploring the cultural conditions of possibility which shape the (re)pro…
Swimming History after Deconstruction: A Queer Engagement
In this paper I make a case for history that is both deconstructive and creative. I begin from my position of “deconstructionism” and move towards queer engagement, which I argue, is a productive term that enables me to embrace deconstruction and subjective approaches to history making, without falling into the trap of writing a coherent “self ” into the text. I create an example of a fragmented swimming history to illustrate what queer engagemen…
Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935–1960
In the context of the ‘obesity epidemic’, there has been widespread government and media interest in the expanding waistlines, and couch-potato lifestyles of the twenty-first-century citizens in Br
Examining Sport Histories: Power, Paradigms, and Reflexivity
Book review of: Richard Pringle and Murray Phillips (eds), 'Examining Sport Histories : Power, Paradigms, and Reflexivity(Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology, 2013), pp. vii + 321, ISBN: 9781935412373
Being critical: An account of an early career academic working within and against neoliberalism
In 2014 I attended a symposium concerning Early Career Academics (ECAs) in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy. I was struck by the dominance of a particular theme at that symposium—that is, how to obtain a position and survive in academia. The aim of this paper is to use an inciting moment that occurred at this symposium as a means to confront some of the broader issues that I thought were at stake. Specifically I seek to interrog…
Introduction: Women, Sport and History in Australia and New Zealand
Raewyn Connell eloquently states that gender is not a fixed system, but a complex, historically changing, and tension-ridden structure of relationships, always open to change.1 As such, historians
Gender Politics, the Olympic Games, and Road Cycling: A Case for Critical History
The Olympics have always been a site of sexism. 1 Indeed, as Kevin Wamsley and Gertrud Pfister state, access to opportunities and rewards have been remarkably different for men and women. 2 This direct exclusion and inequality has often been attributed to the gendered structure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its policies, and as such the modern Olympics have been described as being entrenched in institutionalized sexism. 3or exa…
The Silent Game: A Critical Reading of the History of Netball in Australia
Netball is commonly cited as being the national game for females in Australia. Yet the game’s popularity is not reflected in the field of sport history in the breadth or depth of analysis compared to other sports. There are only two major published academic articles pertaining to the origins and development of netball in Australia. In this paper, these articles are critically analyzed. The analysis reveals gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies i…
You Have to Play Like a Man, But Still be a Woman”: Young Female Colombians Negotiating Gender Through Participation in a Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) Organization
Colombian girls are not encouraged from playing sport due to gendered roles that idealize girls as “delicate” and reserve sport as an activity for boys. Since the early and mid-2000s girls living in two marginalized communities in Colombia have had the unique opportunity to participate in a sport for development and peace organization. Drawing on six months of ethnographic research, this paper explores how these young women are negotiating gender…
Sport, Refugees, and Forced Migration: A Critical Review of the Literature
Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly pay attention to sport and physical activity as a means and context for refugee wellbeing and integration, influenced by wider political and policy concerns about forced migration. Considering this growing scholarly and policy attention, it is timely to take stock of, and critically reflect on, recent developments in this field of research. This paper offers an integrative, critical revie…
It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia
Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a…
Am I an easy unit?’ Challenges of being and becoming an activist teacher educator in a neoliberal Australian context
Over the past decades, a body of scholarship has highlighted the possibilities of critical pedagogies in Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE) (Fitzpatrick, 2018 Fitzpatrick, K. (2018). What happened to critical pedagogy in physical education? An analysis of key critical work in the field. European Physical Education Review, 1–18. doi: 10.1177/1356336X18796530[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. What happened to cr…
Gendering the Coronavirus Pandemic: Toward a Framework of Interdependence for Sport
A growing body of research suggests that economic crises tend to exacerbate existing gender inequalities, particularly in the realms of paid work and political representation. Translating this to the case of sport, how and why might the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic be felt unevenly by professional female athletes and women leaders? In this essay, the authors reflect on the classic feminist critique of the gendered construction of dependenc…
These chicks go just as hard as us!' (Un)doing gender in a Dutch CrossFit gym
CrossFit is a relatively new fitness movement/sport, where women and men train together in the same space, performing the same athletic movements and gender equality is celebrated in CrossFit marketing, promoting equal opportunities for men and women. This paper explores how the much emphasized gender-equality narrative in CrossFit unfolds in gender performativity in a Dutch CrossFit gym. To this end, we draw from an ethnographic case study throu…
Swimming With the Bicheno 'Coffee Club: The Textured World of Wild Swimming
Wild swimming is currently experiencing a surge in popularity as people avowedly attempt to reconnect with the natural world. Previous research has positioned wild swimming as a solitary pursuit whereby individuals retreat from society to connect with or overcome nature and better themselves. This article draws on an ethnographic examination of a wild swimming group in Australia and reveals that while being in nature and personal fulfillment are …
Old Rules for New Times: Sportswomen and Media Representation in the Covid-19 Pandemic
During the first few months of the pandemic, professional sport around the globe stopped, as competitions and leagues were cancelled, postponed, or went into hiatus while sport administrators scrambled to work out ways to reboot their product in a COVID-19 world. Sport media outlets were faced with the task of reporting on sport and filling the void for fans in the absence of any live content. This article is concerned with the content, both in q…
Enhancing social inclusion in sport: Dynamics of action research in super-diverse contexts
There are systemic and longstanding inequalities in sport participation for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) migrants. Drawing on theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy and social justice education, as well as a public sociology perspective, this paper examines the development of an action research (AR) project to support the co-creation of inclusive climates in sports clubs in CALD communities in Melbourne, Australia. We use ar…
Intersectionality in research on equity, diversity, and inclusion in sport: A systematic review of the literature
Research increasingly focuses on intersectionality to advance existing approaches to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in sport. Intersectionality is a complex concept that has been defined and operationalized in various ways. Using a systematic review comprising 41 peer-reviewed publications, this paper examines the extent to which and how research on EDI in sport engages with intersectional thinking and practice. The authors used three the…
Has It Never Been a Better Time to Play? Opportunity, Empowerment and Contested Terrains of Women’s Grassroots Football in Australia
The introduction of the semi-professional Australian Rules Football League for Women (AFLW) in 2017 was indicative of a broader ‘boom’ for women and girls’ sport in Australia. The ‘boom’ promised not only newly created, or enhanced, professional pathways for elite women athletes but also a commensurate change in the community sport landscape, backed by a gender equality framework, that would offer women and girls new, and supported, opportunities…
How is intersectionality being represented by Australian sports organisations? A content analysis
In the realm of critical social theory, the application of intersectionality is crucial for addressing social inequalities and advocating for social justice. Our research focuses on the growing integration of intersectionality in Australian sport systems, a development observed in government documents and sports organisations’ operational procedures. Despite this trend, challenges persist in effectively implementing intersectionality due to the c…
Moving from barriers to collaborative action: Supporting social change in community sport through action research with club leaders
There is a need to move from identifying and understanding the barriers and facilitators to participation in sport experienced by marginalised populations to collaborative action towards social change. This paper examines how action research grounded in sustained academic-practitioner collaboration can stimulate change processes designed to enhance inclusive practices in community sport. Through analysing the three-year action research programme …
We’re Putting All Our Eggs in the Gender Basket”: Examining the Absence of Intersectionality Within Community Sport Gender Equity
Since 1987, Australia has witnessed dedicated policies and investment aiming to increase the number of girls and women participating in community sport. Over four decades, gender equity policies and initiatives have been extensive; however, these have rarely sought to explicitly address intersectional forms of discrimination experienced by women and girls. There is also a lack of understanding of how community sports clubs respond to intersection…
Sociology (19 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (18 works) · Political science (15 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (15 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Law (9 works) · History (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)