Our sports performance research aims to understand and support the enhancement of sport and exercise performance across all abilities.

We investigate the optimal preparation for, delivery of, and recovery from athletic activities. Drawing on multiple scientific disciplines and methods, we seek to better understand the factors associated with performance enhancement and use this knowledge to support athletes, teams, and coaches. We advocate the health and inclusion of all those who perform or operate in sport-related contexts.

Our multidisciplinary approach encompasses physiology, biochemistry and nutrition; biomechanics and motor control; sports psychology; and sports sociology, policy and management.

Research within the Lifestyle for Health and Wellbeing theme aims to facilitate healthy living and ageing across the lifespan. We consider the social, behavioural, nutritional and biological determinants and consequences of human lifestyles.

Theme members conduct world-leading research with the common aim of providing evidence-based knowledge that facilitates improved physical and mental health and wellbeing, lowers the risk of communicable and non-communicable disease, and aids the effective management of pre-existing conditions.

Our work spans from global population research to molecular biology. As such we cover a wide range of expertise including: epidemiology, psychology, physiology, nutrition, biomechanics, human and molecular biology, rehabilitation science and social sciences.

Our Sport, business and society research theme explores how individuals, communities and organisations engage with and facilitate sport and exercise opportunities. Our aim is to develop critical and transformative insight that can improve lives and stakeholder effectiveness.

Reflecting the complexity and intersectionality of sport and exercise practice and organisation, and its significance to the local, national and global contexts, our research is interdisciplinary.

Drawing on sociology, pedagogy, coaching, psychology, economics, marketing and policy, and our engagement with stakeholders, we critically assess the factors, structures and processes that motivate, enable and constrain people’s engagements with sport as part of their daily lives, analysing casual and informal physical activity as well as formal, organised and elite sport.

We are proud to be part of the ESRC Midlands Graduate School DTP in partnership with the universities of Warwick, Nottingham, Birmingham, Aston and Leicester. The DTP offers 17 different funded PhD training pathways across the social sciences, including in Sport and Exercise Science and Health Sciences.

As a DTP PhD student, you will benefit from networking and research opportunities with collaborating institutions, along with advanced training workshops and courses.

For more information, please contact Dominic Malcom and Nicola Paine.