Dr Fiona Skillen is a lecturer in Sport and Events Management at Glasgow Caledonian University. Her research focuses on the historical development of women’s sport in Britain. Her ground breaking work emphasises a new way of looking at women’s sporting past by examining ‘sites of participation’, places such as schools, work places and municipal provision in addition to the more traditional focus on clubs and sports institutions. In doing so her work highlights the ways in which sport was integrated in to women’s everyday lives and also provides a clearer understanding of the development of many popular contemporary sports such as tennis, golf and hockey. Her monograph, ‘Women, Sport and Modernity’ (2013) draws on this research. She has also worked on media representations of sportswomen, advertising, sports clothing and the public and medical debates surrounding women’s increased participation in physical activities. We cannot appreciate or understand why and how we play certain sports, why we participate in competitions such as the Olympics and Commonwealth Games and our successes without looking to the past to understand the evolution and the changing discourses and debates which surrounded them.
Fiona Skillen 