| Description | Papers relating to Celia Brackenridge’s research, publications and advocacy work in gender equity and child protection.
PERSONAL INTRODUCTION BY CELIA BRACKENRIDGE
I have always felt it important to respect ‘living history’ and to try to record the processes of our studies as well as the content. This is all-the-more important for women, whose lives are so often marginalised or rendered invisible by the male machine that governs our public and private lives. This feeling was reinforced when I discovered the many books based on the Mass Observation project that started during World War II. The value of these works, for me, is that they capture the widest possible range of views and experiences from people from all walks of life but, especially, those who might otherwise be considered ‘ordinary’. A catalogue of academic papers of course bears little relation to those experiences but is also an important adjunct to the conventional historical record: in particular, it helps to plot one’s thinking over years of application to the everyday politics of research.
In Spoilsports (2001, Chapter 8) I wrote a deliberately reflexive piece that attempted to untangle some of the personal challenges of my research on sexual abuse. That chapter turned out to be one of the most important transitions in my research career. I had kept as far as possible a complete set of papers and communications from this research from the late 1980s but the discovery of reflexive sociology led me to do more than simply store papers: it prompted me to keep diaries for my larger projects and to ask my PhD students to do the same during their studies. Not much from my diaries appear in this archive but the research reports and books are infused and, I hope, enriched by them.
There is a great deal of secondary material about abuse cases: this is because the subject of abuse in sport was so poorly recognised and documented in the early years that I felt compelled to collect cases histories from the public domain. As described in Spoilsports and in the correspondence files, I was barred from conducting a prevalence survey in the UK so had to resort to amassing qualitative material that could then be used both for research analysis and for advocacy and lobbying. There are very obvious limitations to using media reports of abuse but when primary data are thin on the ground they are a very useful starting point.
I hope that you find this material of use and that it might impel you to use your own studies for advocating positive social change.
Celia Brackenridge, September 2013 [updated Aug 2016] |
| AdminHistory | Donated by Professor Celia Brackenridge, a pioneering campaigner and researcher into gender equality and child abuse in sport.
Celia Brackenridge was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire and grew up in Staines and Ashford, Middlesex. She won a Middlesex County Scholarship to attend the Lady Eleanor Holles School for Girls in Hampton, Middlesex. She studied at Cambridge and Leeds universities She began her career as a Physical Education teacher at Bournemouth School for Girls, but moved within one year into lecturing in higher education when she was headhunted to take a lecturing job at the then-Lady Mabel College (LMC) near Rotherham. The merger of LMC into Sheffield City Polytechnic, later renamed Sheffield Hallam University located Celia within a much wider academic and professional community than before.
Celia was selected for the England lacrosse squad for the first time in 1969 and represented England for 13 years until 1982. She was then the national team coach from 1985 to 1986, including the Lacrosse World Cup in the USA.
Celia has drawn on both natural and social science paradigms in her work. She has pursued particular interests in gender and social justice themes but in her early career also conducted investigations into the evolution and ethology of territorial sports. She is strongly committed to feminist perspectives in scholarship and practice and has worked with many sport organisations at home and overseas to develop and strengthen gender equity and child protective interventions. Celia was a founding member of WomenSport International. In her international advisory roles on child protection in sport, Celia assisted in the development of safeguarding policies for both UNICEF and the International Olympic Committee. Celia was an advisor for the IOC
Celia worked from 2005 to her retirement in 2010 as Director of Brunel's Centre for Youth Sport and Athlete Welfare. She then became research professor and a member of the Brunel Centre for Sport, Health and Welbeing.
Celia received an OBE in the New Years Honours list Jan 2012, for services to Equality and Child Protection in Sport. She has honorary degrees from the University of Chichester and Brunel University. Celia was awarded the Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in December 2016. |
| CustodialHistory | Originally donated to Brunel University Library Special Collections in 2016. Transferred to Brunel University Archives in March 2018, for recataloguing to ISAD(G) and enhanced Data Protection. Recatalogued by Phaedra Casey, Archivist, Feb - April 2018. |