Prof Ruth Jeanes - Informal Sport and Spatial Justice

0:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to season five of the leisure society podcast. The leisure society podcast is an initiative from the editors of the following journals. leisure studies, leisure sciences, work leisure journal, journal of leisure research, annals of leisure research, leisure loisier, international journal of the sociology of leisure, and scholarly, social journal of leisure studies and recreation education. In this podcast, we will be talking to establish an emerging researches in the field regarding their work and their views on the future of leisure. This is Sandra Carnicelli. I'm the editor of the word leisure journal. And today we'll talk to Professor Ruth Jeans from Monash University in Australia, an author of the paper, Spatial Justice, informal sport and Australian community sports participation. This was published as part of the 2024 issue, informal sport, urban space, and inequalities

1:03published by the leisure studies journal. Ruth is a professor and deputy dean research within the faculty of education at Monash University in Australia. Ruth is a sociologist whose research interests focus on the user sport, leisure, and active recreation as a community development resource, particularly to address social exclusion amongst mineralized populations. So, Ruth, thank you so much for joining us this cold January here in Scotland, warm January there in Australia. And thanks for your time today. How are you doing? Thank you so much, Sandra. It's a real pleasure to be talking to you today. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. Ruth, I was at the conversation before, after recording, and when I've been recording this podcast, we are more than 30 episodes now. And for me, the most fascinating thing is should this cover about people's journeys where they come from, who are they beyond what they write?

2:08Sometimes we see the names of these people or these publications, hundreds of them, citations, but we never see the person behind the authorship. So, I want to start with who is Ruth, where do you come from, and how did you get to study sport? Yeah, absolutely. And so, I grew up in the UK in a little town called Davinci, just on the outskirts of Birmingham. And I've always participated in sport. I've, my family backgrounds, very sporting, my mum and my dad were both sort of passionate players of sport and big sports fans. So, I feel like I've always grown up around that. And I guess I really got into sort of studying sport and examining sport when I went to university. So, I did my undergraduate degree at Loughborough University in the UK, and studied English and sports science and physical education.

3:09I really wanted to be a sports journalist, and that didn't quite work out. So, at the end of my degree, I was interested in kind of doing research, but I actually I went off and worked as a sports development officer at my local council for a year. And particularly there, I got into developing and supporting sport participation amongst girls really at that stage. It was a big focus on gender equity and developing different opportunities. And it was just a start of kind of, I guess the kind of focus on soccer and football and girls football and the growth of football. I was charged, I guess, in that role of really trying to develop girls football within the local community. I decided after that I wanted to go back and study, so I actually went to Sheffield University and did a Master's of Sport Management. I really enjoyed it, and then I went and worked in London for a year working with an organisation that was funded by a sport England called the London Active Partnership,

4:17which was really about getting people more active again, quite sport-oriented. And I guess that was when I sort of really started to get interested in research and just sort of looking at what we were doing and whether it was kind of underpinned by research, whether what the work I was doing in sport development, whether it was having an impact or not. I'd played sport all through uni, I particularly played cricket and noticed significant gender inequities in cricket. Previous to going to uni, I'd played rugby as well for quite a while. And again, I guess within these sort of masculine sports domains really noticed significant gender inequities that I was interested in examining. Part of my master's thesis was looking at sort of gender inequities in women's rugby union. And then I kind of really wanted to go back and do more. So an opportunity came up at Loughborough to do a PhD that was part funded by the Football Association.

5:20And I had the opportunity there to do my PhD, which was focusing on the experiences of girls in soccer and particularly looking at gender identity, kind of changing nature of football. And I guess whether the growth of women's football was really beginning to kind of change the game away from being a kind of masculine domain. And I looked at that in relation to girls' experiences. I looked at it in relation to implications for sort of sport policy and physical education policy as well at the time. And then I ended up, so I did my PhD part time and worked as a research assistant at Loughborough in the Institute of Youth Sport that was headed up by Mary Neville, Dr. Mary Neville at the time. And my PhD supervisor was Professor Tess Kaye and she was the Deputy Director of the Institute as well at that point. And they were both hugely influential, I think, on my career, particularly Tess really sort of guided me through and got me involved very early on with Legislative Association and with leisure and her PhD in her background have been in kind of leisure and unemployment.

6:36And she was very strong on social justice equity issues within leisure context. I really kind of had that grounding from Tess and really became very focused in my research on issues of inequity, social justice, minorities communities and how we can kind of begin to start addressing inequities through sport and leisure. And I worked at Loughborough for 10 years in the Institute of Youth Sport on loads of different mainly government funded research projects. It was at the time of the Labour government players, Labour government had come in, social exclusion was a really big policy agenda. And the use of sport as a sort of tool to tackle social exclusion was quite prominent at that point. So lots of different projects that we're looking at ways to use sport to engage with young people, to address considered problems at the time, unemployment, lack of education, homelessness as well.

7:48So I had the opportunity to work on a whole range of projects which was amazing and really kind of developed my research skills, developed my knowledge. And then I had a year working at the University of Central Lancashire where I went there as a research fellow and again worked on a couple of different projects there. Before interviewing for the job at Monash and a job came up here, I'd not really heard of the University, I'd never been to Australia but I just fancied a bit of an adventure, I guess, at that time. So I applied for the job, did the interview on Skype then got off of the job and decided that I'd come over, I thought I'll give it a try. My partner now husband came over with me and we were like I will give it three years, see how it goes, and 15 years later I'm still here.

8:51And yeah, I had a really sort of enjoyable time, I guess, working at Monash and building relationships and networks here. It was interesting moving overseas and going from having like lots of networks and obviously you'll know Sandra has been in a country where everything's close by and it's easy to get to everything and it's easy to kind of meet people, seminars and workshops to suddenly being somewhere where, you know, everywhere was quite a plain journey away, it was, I didn't kind of know anyone, I didn't really have any networks, but it was really fortunate very early on to meet my colleague and sort of ongoing collaborator, Professor Ramon Spai. It would also migrate it here from the Netherlands and that kind of I guess established a partnership of work that we've continued in terms of looking at issues of equity and social justice in sport through that.

9:54And yeah, I've just ended up and I guess through my sort of time here doing different research and then I've had the opportunity to do different roles. I've just come out of this battle of being head of school for five years, so I've sort of moved into administrative pathways a bit within the university. And now I'm just starting a term as deputy dean within the faculty, so it's been a really great experience coming to a different country, being able to explore these issues and explore similar issues but in different contexts and to really kind of continue to be passionate about issues of social justice and how we could kind of open up access to sport and leisure for more groups, also use it as a tool to make a difference within society. I think that's what continues to drive me. That's being absolutely fascinating, and I'd love to hear all of these, I've got to try to unpack some of these points with you.

10:59Obviously Skype doesn't exist more than today, you know, so I've been in Scotland for 15 years, so we probably have crossed each other. So my interview was Skype as well that they used many years ago. The first question I have, obviously, I'm wondering. Obviously you said that you were from a place close to Birmingham. Yes, and it is a place that obviously is opposing the shutdown. There are some issues in terms of inequalities or marginalized groups. Was that something that was already on your rather? Is that something that was part of your reality or how? Yeah, I think so. I'm certainly growing up in areas that were very diverse in terms of socio-economic status. So areas that were particularly, you know, there was a lot of poverty, a lot of unemployment,

12:01and then not too far away was also very rich, very sort of solubrious areas, but also many different multicultural communities as well within Birmingham, and a lot of kind of migration and seeing all the different, I guess, tensions around the changing populations within Birmingham as well growing up, and the different kind of migrant communities that were coming into the city. So that's certainly been something that I've been very kind of aware of, and I think it definitely sort of shaped what I kind of wanted to do within research, and kind of looking at these inequities and feeling that, you know, this is a problem and the way that sort of society is structured is problematic in that we're allowing these inequities to exist, and then kind of putting blame on communities for perceived problems that are not, you know, not the result of anything those communities have done,

13:02but the structures they're living within. I'd say absolutely, I've been growing up in that kind of area and that location really shaped like the work I've gone on to do, and what I kind of, you know, was interested in thought was important. I was for your family, like what's your family kind of had an academic background, or, you know, how was there for them to see you developing from idea of sport, to journalism, to an academic PhD, did they understand your journey? You know, how was it that relationship with your family? Yeah, my dad was first in family to go to university, so he'd done civil engineering at Nottingham Uni, so he kind of understood the university system and was really kind of interested in my journey, and particularly doing the PhD, and beyond, you know, even now both him and my mum are still alive,

14:03and really engaged in sort of what I'm doing, and I said both of them love sport. I think at first it was a bit sort of like you can have a career of a family in sport, but you know, they've sort of both, I think, can see the significance and importance of sport within society, so... Have you considered a career in a sport? Have you considered to be an athlete? No, I wasn't good enough to do that, so I wanted to be in sport in some way, and I, yeah, at first I sort of thought I'd probably do something, you know, around... I also had a bit of a phase where I wanted to be a sports psychologist, that also kind of... I don't know, I got into sociology, and I love that, and I love research, and it was like, okay, this is a great kind of path for me. It's interesting, like, my parents... Not many people know, because most of my research is in tourism, but my background is in physical education, so my undergraduate was in physical education, and I remember having that conversation with my parents, because I loved sport.

15:05I wasn't good enough to be anywhere professional, and I remember having a conversation like, I want to maybe do some physical education, like my mum was like, are you gonna be a teacher? Coming from Brazil, that I did that physical education and teachers, like, existed was like, oh man, I'm like, well, maybe, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that was one of the things when I was doing my PhD was sort of like, are you gonna be like a teacher in a school after that? And I was like, well, that is one option, but also like, you know, there's other kind of career paths here, so... I think, yeah, definitely, I think it's a lot more common now, but definitely the time this idea of having a career in sport that wasn't... you either playing or coaching or being part of it was sort of a bit alien, so it took a while to get used to. And I was obviously quite interested in looking, obviously, how your career developed, and looking through your research and things like that, and one of the things that called my attention,

16:08and because it's, I record this podcast, I can ask whatever I want, one of the things that called my attention is a paper that you wrote with Ramon, which is, and you use Paulo Freire, which obviously for us, Brazilians, is something very important, and I even recorded one of the series of Carla, who is a colleague there in Australia, and we talk a little bit about that. I mean, how did you encounter Paulo Freire in your journey? If you can remember, right? Yeah, absolutely. It was in a faculty of education for the first time, so previously I'd obviously been in like a sports science department at Loughborough, and I'd always been surrounded by academics that were more in the sports space. I came here to a faculty bed, and all of a sudden I'm working with academics and brilliant colleagues who were looking at all things related to education in loads of different ways.

17:08And I guess that kind of really opened up my eyes to the difference, to the theories of education. At the time, I'd been doing a lot of work in sport for development, predominantly in Zambia, and looking at the idea of sport as an education tool. And then it was really, I guess, coming together with Ramon, who kind of bought the sort of friarian perspective, and he was saying, look, I, he'd been doing similar sport for development work in Brazil as well. And he was sort of saying, look, I think there's a need to really begin to kind of conceptualise the education work that's happening in sport for development. It's kind of really under theorised within the field. And it's kind of just taken as a given as sort of our will just do education, and that will kind of solve problems and issues within these communities in the country's worst sport for development was really taking off. And I guess the more we kind of looked into friar,

18:09and the more like Ramon and I talked about it, we were kind of like, you know, friarism ideas really resonated in terms of the whole concept of empowerment, of contractisation through education, the idea of developing critical consciousness, and it really sort of spoke to the work that we were kind of doing. And the work, there were other scholars as well at the time. People like Oscar Mawango and Davey's Bander in a Zambian context that were kind of really beginning to theorise the work, because they were sort of leading and delivering a lot of this work. And we're aligning it with kind of the Ubuntu philosophy as well, which also sort of friar, I think, really linked well into. And it really, I guess, the ideas and the concepts just gave us a way of understanding what was and wasn't happening within education. And really, I think, I mean, that paper has like really sort of been well cited,

19:11and it was really a way of beginning to think about what was happening in the field at the time, and people have gone on and developed the ideas in lots of other ways going forward. But it was really the first time that we sort of felt like we'd started to think critically about education in that context, and certainly being at Monash was great for that, because everyone around me was doing similar stuff in different areas of education. So just broaden my mind and maybe realise just how good it is like that whole interdisciplinary thinking and having access to other ideas and different ways of thinking can be really influential in helping you kind of drive your own research and ideas forward. I think later on this conversation, I want to go back about this career development and the shift from, you know, into administrative roles. I think one of the people who interviewed last season is Lauren Duffy in US, and she has just started us ahead of the department and moving that citrus into here.

20:16So I'll ask a little bit more towards the end of this conversation. But I like to move now to the paper that I said I would talk a little bit about today. And the reason for that is there's a couple of things that code my attention on the paper, right? So the paper is spatial justice, informal support and Australian community sports participation. And obviously one of the things that you, that is a conversation, and you guys point that is like the increase in informal forms of support in Australia. And I'm wondering if you can explain for people who maybe are not so into sport research, what do you mean by informal sports? Yeah, that's a really good question because it's pretty contested as well. And it's something that we really grappled with across the project as well as to, well, what actually is informal sport? I get the way we kind of framed it.

21:17We started off framing informal sport as participation that was happening outside of traditional sort of structures and systems. So outside of club based activities. And predominantly by people that, you know, they weren't kind of paying memberships. They weren't affiliated to sort of leagues and organizations. They were tendin to sort of come together and self-organize their activity. And because of that, they weren't kind of tied to those different structures and systems. So they didn't necessarily need like uniforms. They didn't have to pay registration fees. And they were just coming together and playing. That obviously though is pretty broad as to what it can be. What we were particularly interested in looking at within our project was informal types of sport that were also recognizable as being played in that more structured club based system. So things like soccer, cricket, you know, the sort of traditional kind of team games. Rather than I guess people say going for a run on their own, we were less sort of focused on that.

22:23But that also might fit within the informal sport kind of definition. As we've gone on with the project, we've really tried to think more about how we conceptualise what informal sport is. My colleague Justin O'Connor's like really led I guess that part of the project and that work. And we've kind of moved to this idea of informal sports. Really thinking about it in the like the old sociological terms of structure and agency. So people having greater agency over how they participate when they participate the ways in which they participate. Feel that that occurs within an informal context compared to a more sort of club based context. And that's a useful way of thinking well, what is informal sport is basically the kind of degrees of agency and autonomy the participants have over their experience. It's probably going to be more informal. And so yeah, we were really I guess interested in this concept.

23:23There was a sort of we could see there was a kind of growth in informal participation statistics were pointing to that. And we've actually got a lot better system now in Australia recording participation, which illustrates the informal participation is significant. And far outweighs club based sport and for the project we were doing I guess we were really interested in the fact that if so many people are kind of participating in this way and choosing to do that. Why is all the attention faced paste on this sort of club based participation where you need the majority, particularly the adult population and just not engaging and not participating. Interesting. I wonder if like depending on the country, like this kind of it will change a little bit the parameters are of that definition or you think is different if you go to Brazil or like other countries where you know is even less structured.

24:26I feel like that is at least. I think so and I think yeah, countries where the sort of community sport system isn't so centered around like we kind of talk about it as being like the Eurocentric model of sport participation. So I think this kind of divide is much more obvious within kind of European countries and those that have been sort of colonized by Europe or Britain. So particularly like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, we've noticed similar trends, but then I think there's definitely other countries where there's less of a sort of significant divide and probably greater levels of informal participation occurs. Just as part of sort of everyday life. So if I sort of kind of again thinking about some of my experiences in Zambia, informal sport is just part and parcel of everyday life. Everyone kind of that participates in sport probably does it informally to some degree and may also play in a club based system if it's available.

25:32And I would anticipate that Brazil is probably similar in relation to high levels of informal participation. I think something like the street football, you know, things like that. And that they that opposite that part of a formal sport is one of the things that caught my attention in looking at the paper. Because of remembering my young age playing on the streets or with neighbors or whatever. I think that caught my attention is the concept of spatial justice because I actually have a page issue that was just about to submit in the next three weeks. And his work is also centering Lefebvre. And obviously you guys use Lefebvre and spatial justice and construction of spaces using that kind of theoretical framework and I'm wondering. Understand a little bit more of what did that came from and why did you think that was a good way of framing the debate about informal sport and so on.

26:33And yeah, I always sort of again, predominantly like headed within sociology, but I've always been interested in geography as well and I think issues of space. And particularly power and space, kind of fundamental when we're thinking about equity and inequities and where people are marginalized and what's happening in those spaces that lead to that marginalization. And so I felt a Lefebvre's work really kind of allows you to begin to disentangle those kind of power dynamics. And I was particularly inspired by the work of Kathy Vanning had done a lot of work in terms of looking at running and women's boxing as well and sort of drawing on aspects of Lefebvre as well. And I kind of was like, oh, this is actually a really good framework, I think, for understanding what's happening in informal sporting spaces. And with Lefebvre, obviously he has this sort of notion of the different types of spaces and how they get produced and how kind of I guess histories and traditions impact on the way that spaces are used and who's kind of accepted and who's not accepted within spaces.

27:48And then the practices that occur within certain spaces as well and how those shape experience, how those lead to kind of exclusion or inclusion. And it just felt like it was a really good framework for beginning to kind of shine a spotlight on what was happening for what we were seeing when we were kind of going out and observing all these groups playing in formal sport in local communities. And we've done like lots of sort of interviews and focus groups groups that were playing across Melbourne. And the key thing that kept coming out of that was like people were passionate about playing their sport really wanted to do it. They love playing informally because of the flexibility. The biggest issue was having regular access to space to be able to play and I guess that was something that we really kind of wanted to dig down into with the article. And Lefebvre gave us the lens, I think, again to really sort of see what was happening and the kind of politics, the dynamics that were at play that were kind of excluding and marginalizing these informal groups within different sporting spaces.

29:02Yeah, I think that I think that's great up to like, you know, I think Lefebvre's work helps a lot to understand marginalization and other things as well. I think it's really really useful. And you mentioned that a lot about all your data collection and all the people like and the numbers of interviews is quite incredible because I think it's like hundred interviews or something like that. And it's like huge. So I wonder how and it gives me the impression by reading that the connections with the sector that you guys have first is really good right because you don't reach that number of interviews out of the blue. So I guess I wanted to know a little bit of how does it work in terms of getting access to that data or you know how the partnerships that you guys have and how did that work. Yeah, absolutely. We were so fortunate with this project. So it was funded by the Australian Research Council, which I guess is the equivalent of like the ESRC in Europe. But we also had it was what was called a linkage grant. So you have to have partnerships with industry to be able to get access to the funds.

30:09And we had brilliant partners with an organization called Vic Health, which is a health promotion organization based in the state of Victoria here and it's like really just amazing proactive work in the health space and really tuned into this idea of informal sport as a health promotion resource. So Vic Health were amazing. And then we also worked with our long time partners and not for profit organization called the Center for Multicultural Youth. And they as the name suggests a very focused on promoting participation and engagement for multicultural young people within Victoria here and they particularly have a focus on the use of sport within that context. Our kind of colleagues at the Center for Multicultural Youth were just massively connected across the sports sector here. So they really I guess put

31:09puts in touch with a number of key sort of organizations and number of sporting bodies, sporting organizations, but they also had really good context on the ground with different community groups, which gave us access to the informal sport groups. That to be honest with the hardest part is sort of finding and talking with informal sport participation because you obviously don't have the sort of you can't just go to the club, you can't have a chat with the president and kind of get into the club that way. So that was interesting. We sort of had a few contexts that we were able to go to directly and sort of say, is it okay if we come along and have a lucky group. But the main way we kind of did that was by working with the local council on areas that they had noticed that either informal sport participation was taking place or areas where they had a lot of complaints about informal sport being taking part and particularly where clubs were complaining that informal groups were coming and using their facilities and their pictures.

32:19So we were sort of we asked the council for that information and then we basically just went and hung out in those areas that kind of peak times in the mornings and the evenings. And just sort of waited for people to come and kind of got got chatting to people asking them kind of what they were doing and then we sort of explained the research and kind of recruited people on that way. But again, we had some brilliant research assistants then who would come and hang out but they'd often like start playing the activity and start doing it and kind of become part of the group for a little while as well. So it's it was really quite it's sort of difficult and it took a number of months and then for us in Victoria on top of that, we had COVID as well. So COVID hit and obviously everything shut down couldn't get out to the group. That was my next question, right? Because I don't want you to preempt my question because I've been thinking about this question, which is so obviously finding the people was interesting, right?

33:23But obviously you are looking to space and then you suddenly your concept of space somehow changed before COVID and after COVID, right? Of this where do you go and how do you behave and things like? Surely at some point you guys like, oh my god, I'm studying something here that and there's a chance of being completely different at the end of the product that it was at the beginning of the project. Yeah, absolutely. And we were kind of just really getting into that sort of data collection. We've done that, got the contacts and we kind of started to see the groups. And then all of a sudden we kind of went into shut down and obviously here we had one of the longest and most severe lockdowns in the world. So we were all on five kilometer radiuses, we couldn't go out, we had periods of time where we could only exercise outside for an hour a day, things like that.

34:24So the ability to actually kind of get out and get data was really challenging. So where we could we sort of switched online and we did interviews with particularly with the sports organizations, it was actually a great time to be connecting with them and interviewing them and talking to them about some of the policies and politics of this issue. But with the groups, they just sort of disappeared from sight, but then one of the key things we found was when activity started to come back in and the lockdowns were lifted. The informal groups rebounded back really quickly because they weren't subject to the same regulations as all the clubs in terms of protocols and processes that they had to enact to be kind of COVID safe. So the informal groups tended to just come back and what we sort of saw for the first few months, particularly after the lockdown lifted was just this huge boomer where we're going back to the areas and there was just like participation happening all over the place.

35:26Because a lot of the people that were traditionally been planning clubs were also playing informally because it was the main way they could at that time. So I think it was, yeah, it was really sort of fascinating seeing, you know, when there's not other sort of opportunities there and the space is available, just how much it could get activated and people come out and kind of participate in sport in that way. And yeah, I think it's fascinating and interesting to see these dynamics of groups created disappear, migrating, moving, recreating amalgamating and things like that that sometimes we only see informal sporting activities. And one of the other things that you guys looked at policy on the policy side of things, and I'm wondering, not much into how you analyze the policy or anything I get, but how did you manage to then feedback what to you analyze, you know, how was that process at the end of saying, well, we also look to the policy, we look to the participants, you know, how did that work in terms of feedbacking.

36:41Yeah, that, I mean, I was really fascinating, the key thing that we, when we got kind of looked at the different policies was just sort of at that, you know, that higher level, the kind of, I guess, strategic vision, we were obviously encountering policies that were all about increasing participation, all the health and social benefits of doing that wanting to have healthy active communities and that, you know, that was right from local government through to state level policies right the way up to national policies. So we had this one sort of policy agenda on the one hand that was super supportive really of informal sport participation was kind of recognizing that informal sport was a thing and it needed supporting. But then when we kind of got into the nuances of different policies, a particular local level, there were lots of different policies that just really were constraining participation, so kind of rules and regulations over who could book pictures at local level. Like you had to be an affiliated group, you had to have public liability insurance, so that was just knocking out kind of informal sport participation.

37:42And then when we kind of got into the kind of state and national level actually looking at the sport participation policies, they were just so heavily skewed towards supporting club based participation. And informal sport at best was only kind of coming in where it was seen as kind of like a platform to feed people into structured sport and club based sport. So we really try to highlight those kind of disconnects that were happening in the policy space, really try to use the perspectives and experiences of our own formal sport participants to kind of say like, hey, this is a really important thing. It's really valuable to the people in communities that are playing in this way. And one of the, I guess one of the best things we did about this project in terms of been a policy lever was we did an economic analysis and that again was led by my colleague Justin who is definitely sort of that sky and kind of can do all the figures. And he did a kind of cost benefit analysis of the value of informal sport for communities which indicated that it provided a significant kind of health economic benefit to communities of supporting this type of activity.

38:57So we were able to kind of go back to councils with that information and sort of say, look, this can really help in terms of your health and wellbeing agendas. And it's sort of, I guess it's set at that local level, it's set in motion a number of things we're now continuing to work with a group of eight councils across Melbourne on looking at ways that they can improve access for informal groups. And looking at how they can kind of get around some of these issues of insurance and things that are kind of blockages and barriers for informal groups. And we worked with a company up in Queensland called sports box who have produced these kind of equipment boxes that are now being located in councils across Australia and it's like at base to people can go and just use the app and unlock equipment to use and then pop it back in at the end of their session. So we've had like a number of I guess sort of tangible kind of impacts on trying to make change at that local level.

40:03At the national level, I think probably one of the more significant things is been sort of been a constant dialogue throughout the project with a key kind of, you know, the Australian sports commission with different sporting governing bodies. Cricket in particular was very interested in this because there's such a huge community of informal cricket participants, particularly amongst Southeast Asian communities here. So cricket was very interested in, you know, how can we kind of support these groups. But this at that kind of national level, one of the key changes that's happened the last couple of years has been the changing in how participation data is reported. The Australian sports commission and now really clearly sort of split their data collection to be able to capture data on informal sport. As well as club based sport, which was certainly one of the things we were arguing for the most was kind of we knew this was a thing, but everyone was saying, well, we just don't have the data.

41:05We don't really know what participants like, which almost became a reason to not engage with it. So now having that kind of national level data that sort of really clearly shows that informal participation is much higher than club based sport has really helped in kind of starting to encourage a lot more conversations about well, how can we support this form of participation alongside like a club based system. So it's really been like a, it was ongoing kind of dialogue. We were constantly kind of doing seminars, doing workshops, but also kind of having informal conversations with key stakeholders, working with like Vic Health and Centre for Multicultural Youth in terms of influencing and just trying to kind of get those changes. I guess the thing I've noticed is sort of it's, it's obvious, you just have to accept like it's small change and it's a slow process. It doesn't kind of, you can't just split the lever all at once, but you know, definitely in roads that I feel that we've made from this project.

42:09I read somewhere that one of the reasons, not sure how true is that, or it's just like things that you see online, but one of the reasons that England never won more football world cups is because of all the signs of no ball games around single. Yeah, yeah. So part of me, because I live in Scotland, right, I want to get rid of my kids can play ball outside on the little garden that is in front of us. On the other hand, as a Brazilian, I want to keep the signs there so you guys cannot win any more world cups. There is, that was sort of one of the angles we went down to kind of push the importance of this as an agenda was there, there is a little bit of research, particularly in football that sort of says about the importance of informal participation as part of an elite password. And doesn't it, you know, the more you're out, the more you play and the more you practice in the better you get. And if you're only doing that within like club base training sessions, you're always just going to be limited.

43:17So it makes a lot of sense. It's sort of a formal play really helps in kind of building a talent pathway. Yeah, it's interesting. It is fascinating. It's a type of topic that I guess to whoever you speak about, people always remember their childhood or places that they visit where they saw people playing on the park or playing on public space or doing an activity here. And it's just, it's a very easy to connect and it's very easy to also to understand the importance of those practices is not it's just. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic. Roof, I want to move forward because in conscious of the time because we've been talking a bit too much to the couple of other points that I have to ask you. One is, as you mentioned, you have been head of school and now you're a sensitive research for the whole faculty, but you're still extremely productive as a researcher.

44:26How do you balance that? It's not easy, I guess. I think the key things have been, I've been really fortunate that I've moved into those roles at points of time where I guess my research agenda and trajectory has been quite well established. And I think the main reason I've been able to kind of keep productive and keep going with it is just the partnerships and relationships and the collaborative work that I've been able to be involved with. And I think that's been one of the things is sort of, I guess when you're an early career researcher and you might work with one or two other people, but often you work on your own particular, I guess, my discipline. To now kind of working in bigger teams and obviously that opportunity is afforded from having research funding as well, but it just means when I've had collaborations that there's times where I can kind of focus and I can do work and other times where my administrative tasks are taken over.

45:38Other of my colleagues are kind of taking the lead and they're driving things forward and that has been absolutely fundamental. I've also had amazing PhD students the last few years who have all been working in kind of different areas of equity inclusion and sport and leisure participation and having the opportunity to kind of work with them and to publish with them has been a brilliant as well in kind of keeping ideas and knowledge moving forward. And just seeing them taking some of like my initial work and just take it to the next level. I've got a student Satoshi who's just finishing his PhD who is really kind of pushed forward the work we've been doing in the informal sport space and looking at governance and bought a whole heap of different theoretical perspectives into that. I think it really has been just having those collaborators and having the opportunity to kind of box off time where I will be able to drive things forward, but at this point I can't because my other roles are just too busy, but there's other people that can do that.

46:45So I think the kind of collaborations are really key with these sorts of roles and then just I guess the usual sort of things of trying to carve up your week and cover time. I always try and prioritise at least some time in the week to focus on my own kind of research work and push that forward. I never kind of do that as much as I'd like, but I just I do think it is important to prioritise time where you can for really driving your own work forward. And keep your curiosity is not like how because that's the other thing right because sometimes you're so into the admin rule and very focus on processes and strategies and things like that and I'm having that space to elaborate your creativity around the you know an area that you love and you've been always. Yeah, I think that's fundamental like just yeah remaining curious and again I think that's what helps with working with other colleagues or having.

47:50PhD students or research fellows come in that have these different ideas and just make you think differently and again that's one of the benefits of having administration roles is like as head of school I was overseeing up to 90 academic staff at one point. And they're all doing different things and you kind of get to learn about what the work they're doing and I'm as I mentioned about fair it pulls you in different theoretical directions it you learn about kind of ideas and concepts and theories that and you know methodologies as well that you're like oh that's really interesting and it just makes your brain sort of think well you know often it's not relevant to what you're doing but there is times where you're like oh that's really sort of. And relevant and could be really useful I wonder how can think about this in relation to my work and I think that's so important just having constant like access to different ways of thinking and different ideas and thinking how can that make you see things in a different way and how can it push kind of knowledge on and I really try it's easy to think to lose that when you get into administration but I really think it's important to kind of keep and just say that.

49:04It's like curiosity going and be willing and open to kind of keep hearing about new ideas and new ways of thinking. And I was like I think when you do some like when you do research in in wow in fields like sport or leisure or tourism you are contributing to I wouldn't say this abstract but you're contributing to a population that is so sometimes so wide that you kind of it's difficult to grasp right but in this administrative roles you I guess you're trying to contribute specifically to the career development research development. You know professional development of those very real specific individuals right so how do you see like that obviously that different level of academic contribution right is still an academic contribution not to support knowledge or but specifically to the development of academics let's say. Yeah absolutely and like I think I find that really rewarding and I feel it's obviously fundamental I think as we get more senior as academics to what we can do and what we can kind of give back.

50:19I know it's sort of headed to school my focus really was on exactly that the kind of career development of the academics that were in my school and now I'm much more focused on the kind of the research development and the development of research skills amongst academics and I think also within that you kind of want to put in place platforms and support that you had a new experience as I mentioned before I was so fortunate to have incredible mentoring. Coming right from my you know PhD supervisor and even before that with my master's supervisor that kind of is continued through my career but recognizing not all academics have that so how can you provide that support how do you provide access to those kind of networks to gain that support and to find collaborators and people to kind of work with so I think that's really important but also acknowledging that the university systems very different.

51:19When you know I was an early career researcher and I'm you know just now in my current role one of the things I'm grappling with is the focus within the sector now on the recruitment of education focused academic staff and most of the early career opportunities now are coming up in education focus roles so how can we support staff to thrive in those roles and for those that want to how do we also support research careers as part of. That kind of academic work and how does that fit is you know it's it's just I feel the intensity is crazy I mean just sort of reviewing I was interviewing before Christmas for level B teaching and research position but level B teaching and research position and just the expectations are placed on staff at that level now in terms of publications and all have they got grants and it's like no they're three minutes into the course.

52:19It's a career like why are we expecting this but there is this sort of higher expectation now that I think a lot of senior staff will look back on and sort of say well got you know if it was like that when I was starting I wouldn't have got a job you know it's sort of so it's some it is quite ferocious and intense now and I think part of my work is just trying to support people through that intensity and see how can we best help them. It's interesting because you said that you get like a hundred applications for a post right and three people have all funding millions of publications and instead of you asking why did you have this million of publications and funding you ask why do they want the 98. It's like exactly that and then obviously all the inequities that happen in that space in terms of who has the opportunity and who who is that type of person that has that opportunity and it was exactly that we had this position we had over a hundred applicants.

53:20We did a sort of short list but long listing and even the long list ended up in 30 applicants who all were brilliant you know I've happily employed any of them to be honest and trying to get down to the one person it was just yeah it was mind blowing actually of sort of the intensity that is academic work. And in that context what do you tell your PhD students what do you tell for the people who you know how do you guys and what would you say to them right. Yeah exactly so I've really tried to you know first and foremost I don't always encourage my PhD students like the PhD is the thing and as you know that is such a it's such a luxury in an awesome time to just be focusing in on a piece of research. A piece of research that hopefully excites you that is really taking knowledge forward so I do really encourage the students I work with like fundamentally focus on that make it brilliant explore the things do all the kind of gymnastics in terms of theory and all the different kind of approaches and as we said earlier be curious I really engage with that.

54:35But then like you say the reality in terms of trying to develop publications alongside that so we do try a number of my students now are doing thesis by publication which I guess gives them that kind of grounding but if they're not we really try and work out okay how can how can they get involved in things that I'm publishing from to give them that kind of stepping stone into the journey. How can we plan out publications for them to write how can they get involved with projects in terms of research work to build up the skills. How can we support them with teaching and making sure they have that but also I think more and more just kind of looking at what's their connections with industry as well and giving other options you know beyond academia and and hooking them in with kind of different types of research that might be occurring within sporting organizations or within not for profit and kind of evaluation work as well.

55:37So just trying to make sure there's a real breadth of kind of skills but it's a lot and like I really want them to enjoy and focus on the PhD I think that's such a crucial part of you learning in your development and it's hopefully if you just you know you just don't have that time to actually be able to focus on that at that point as well. And I think it's something important because sometimes like for us we also need to remember or understand how things change from when we've done and how different is now and in parts is worse in parts maybe better you know there's it's just different but it is I feel that is different from you know 20 years ago or 15 years ago or are so and I'll be cognizing that is a step towards trying to provide some better development for for early career research is as well right.

56:40Yeah exactly and I mean I guess you know all the things like the age of AI now as well that's obviously something we never had to deal with and brings different opportunities and challenges but I think that's a fundamental part of the PhD journey as well now is sort of learning what to do and not to do with AI and how that fits. Someone who English is not the first language right I would keep thinking about that's like would chat chat GPT have helped me to struggle as in writing in English or would have been actually something that will help but not allow me to develop as much as I should in terms of the language you know and it's only I have I still have that paradox of you know would actually chat GPT be a problem a long term because I rely on it instead of developing my I don't know right. And exactly that and then how you kind of learn the skill to them be able to guide others like I've been playing about with bits of analysis using AI at the moment and some of that is it's good you know it's good critical analysis that I look at and I think oh that's you know looks quite similar to some of the things that I would

57:58have judged from this but then there's so much in that in terms of being able to judge if that analysis is any good or not if you never learn those skills you're not going to have to do. Differentiate. Yeah it's yeah whole I pray very well. Exactly and for us it's a constant learning health right. It keeps us on our toes as well. Yes. Ruth thank you so much I've I know I we spoke a lot I think it's almost an hour off of conversation and you have a whole day ahead still to go. But I just want to say how awesome it was obviously learning from you learning from your you know background and career and and and their research is being really really lovely. So thank you so much for your contribution I hope I hope wasn't too bad for you as well. Thank you. I really yeah really enjoyed the opportunity thanks for just giving me free will to chat away.

59:00Yeah really enjoyable thank you. I'm sure people that will listen to us will enjoy as well so today we had Professor Ruth James from Monash University in Australia. Thank you for joining us today and for more content you can please follow us on Apple podcast or on Spotify. Thank you.