Dr. Michael Giardina is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies and Qualitative Inquiry in the Department of Sport Management. One of the leading qualitative researchers in the field, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including most notably Sport Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation (with Joshua Newman; Palgrave, 2011), which received NASSS’s Outstanding Book Award and was named as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, Qualitative Inquiry—Past, Present, & Future: A Critical Reader (with Norman Denzin; Routledge, 2015), and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 6^th Edition (with Denzin, Yvonna Lincoln, & Gaile Cannella; SAGE, forthcoming).

Dr. Giardina’s research has also been published in a wide variety of leading international journals in the field including: Sociology of Sport Journal, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, & Health, and Communication & Sport—as well as in the fields of qualitative inquiry (e.g., International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; Qualitative Inquiry), cultural studies (e.g., Cultural StudiesóCritical Methodologies; Review of Education, Pedagogy, & Cultural Studies; Harvard Educational Review), communications (e.g., Critical Studies in Media Communication), and behavioral science (e.g., American Behavioral Scientist).

In broad terms, his research is primarily focused on three interrelated lines of inquiry: physical culture and bio-politics (e.g., the celebrity body, the mediated body, the body of the researcher, etc.); global sporting cultures (e.g., issues related to hybridity, flexible citizenship, and transnational identity); and sport in post-9/11 America (e.g., the intersection of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, the politics of whiteness, ‘NASCAR Nation’, etc.). Each of these three lines of inquiry are further explored through the use of qualitative and interpretive research methods (e.g., critical ethnography, cultural studies, etc.)

In addition to his scholarship, Dr. Giardina is co-editor of three journals: Qualitative Inquiry, Cultural StudiesóCritical Methodologies and International Review for Qualitative Research, as well as past-Editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal, for which he served as Editor from 2015-2020. He is also co-editor of several book series for Routledge, including Foundations & Futures in Qualitative Inquiry and Qualitative Research in Sport & Physical Activity. He has been a NASSS Research Fellow since 2017, and in 2020 he was named Director of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

Dr. Giardina teaches the graduate course in Sport Media, and the doctoral seminar in Qualitative Inquiry. He is currently accepting doctoral student inquiries from those interested in working on/in the above theoretical, methodological, and topical areas, broadly conceived.