Research

The IDEAS Research Lab has 4 main priorities: indigeneity, diaspora, equity and anti-racism—all related to sport and the moving body. 

Our projects center efforts to decolonize kinesiology as a discipline, sport, and physical cultures more broadly. We aim to bring indigenous ways of thinking, being, researching and doing from Asia, Africa, Polynesia, South America, and across Turtle Island into movement studies. Our research on cricket, dabke, and capoeira demonstrates our broad passions related to diasporas in Canada. The equity and anti-racism work we do is firmly rooted in intersectional social justice and committed to revealing the fissures and opportunities within Canadian post-secondary and recreational sport systems. Our priorities are leadership, leisure, and learning.

 

Videos

This 15-minute video poem based on the article ‘Awakening to Elsewheres’ illustrates the Re-Creation Collective’s passion for sport and physical activity, the many ways we have been only partially included, and our dreaming about how to do sport differently.

Eales, L., McGuire-Adams, T., Joseph, J., Peers, D., Bridel, W. (2021). Elsewheres: A Video-poem.

Lightning Talk with Dr. Janelle Joseph
In this presentation, Dr. Joseph highlights initial findings from an embodied leadership program at University of Toronto. Students who identify as racialized non-binary, cis-, and trans-women participated in a variety of movement practices (boxing, strength training, dance) and learned about self-confidence, balance, boundaries and other essential leadership skills.

Introducing Dr. Janelle Joseph
Dr. Joseph describes her interest in race, education, sport and physical culture, multiculturalism—how we get along and learn from one another—and resistance, including activism and critical race theory. She reflects on her own education journey and her motivations for becoming a professor.
See the full video series on Windvane.

 
 

Books

Joseph, J. (2017). Sport and the Black Atlantic: Cricket, Canada, and the Caribbean diaspora. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Joseph, J., Darnell, S., & Nakamura, Y. (Eds.) (2012). Race and sport in Canada: Intersecting inequalities. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press (Forward by Rinaldo Walcott).

 
 

The Ontario University Athletics Report

Canadian universities are not immune to racism. The IDEAS Research Lab 2021 project illuminates racial demographics, experiences and knowledge of racism, and tools for anti-racist change among student-athletes, coaches and administrators in Ontario, Canada.

Download the full report here.

 
 

Selected Refereed Articles

  • Joseph, J., Pennock, K. & Brown, S. (2024). Black Hair is a Safe Sport Issue!: Black Aesthetics, Access, Inclusion, and Resistance. Sociology of Sport Journal.

  • Hamdonah, Z. & Joseph, J. (2024). Indigenous Dance, Cultural Continuity, and Resistance: A Netnographic Analysis of the Palestinian Dabke in the Diaspora, Media Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437241228735

  • Joseph, J. & Bain, N. (2024). Leisure as Black Survival: Ballroom, Vogue and Black Queer and Trans+ Activism in Canada, Leisure/Loisir. https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2024.2308911

  • McKenzie, B., Joseph, J., & Razack, S. (2023). Whiteness, Canadian university athletic administration, and anti-racism leadership: ‘A bunch of white haired, white dudes in the back rooms’ Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, & Health, 16(2), 197-212, https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2023.2259397

  • McKenzie, A.I. & Joseph, J. (2023) Whitewashed and Blacked Out. Counter-Narratives as an Analytical Framework for Studies of Ice Hockey in Canada. Sociology of Sport Journal. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2022-0065.

  • Peers, D., Joseph, J., Chen, C., Fawaz, N.*, Tink, L., Eales, L., Bridel, W. Hamdon, E.., Carey, A. & Hall, L. (2023). An Intersectional Foucauldian Analysis of Canadian National Sport Organisations’ ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion’ (EDI) policies and the reinscribing of injustice. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. 15(2) 193-209. https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2023.2183975

  • Joseph, J. Tajrobehkar, B., Hamdonah, Z., & Estrada, G., (2022). Racialized Women in Sport in Canada: A Scoping Review. Journal of Physical Activity and Health Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1123/jpah.2022-0288

  • Peers, D., Joseph, J., McGuire-Adams, T., Eales, L., Fawaz, N.*, Chen, C., Hamdon, E., Kingsley, B., (2022). We become gardens: Intersectional methodologies for mutual flourishing. Leisure/Loisir 47(1), 27-47. https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2022.2141836Kriger, D. Keyser-Verrault, A. Joseph, J. & Peers, D. (under review). The Operationalizing Intersectionality Framework, Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology