Author

Rylee Dionigi

Rylee A. Dionigi is Associate Professor, Socio-cultural Dimensions of Sport, in the School of Exercise Science, Sport and Health at Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia. She has published widely in the fields of sport sociology, ageing and physical activity, health, exercise psychology, and leisure studies. She has taught in the sociology of active living and ageing, sport and exercise behavior and supervises students in the sociology of sport, leisure, health, ageing and education. Dr. Dionigi has expertise in qualitative methodologies and extensive knowledge on the personal and cultural meanings of sport, leisure and exercise participation in later life. In her book (research monograph), Competing for life: Older people, sport and ageing (2008), she argues that the phenomenon of older people competing in sport is a reflection of an ageist society which continues to value youthfulness over old age and reject multiple ways of ageing. Overall, her work offers a critique of health promotion trajectories related to ageing and calls for an acceptance of diversity and difference in older age. Dr Dionigi (with Michael Gard) has a scholarly book commissioned with Palgrave Macmillan, UK (Dionigi & Gard, in press). This edited collection problematises Sport for All policy and related Active Ageing and health promotion polices across the lifespan. This edited collection is distinctive because it provides a critical social science perspective on Sport for All or Sport for Life that is aged focussed. It offers an array of theoretical and methodologically diverse perspectives on this topic, and highlights the intersections between different life stages and social, economic and cultural factors in the developed world, including class, gender, ability, family dynamics and/or race. Dionigi, R. A. & Gard, M. (Eds). (in press). Sport and physical activity across the lifespan: Critical perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, UK. (ISBN 9781137485618). 90,000 words