Holly Thorpe | |
---|---|
Awards | James Cook Research Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, Leverhulme Fellowship, Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Research Excellence Award for Social Sciences |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Waikato |
Thesis | |
Doctoral advisor | Doug Booth, Toni Bruce, Richard Pringle |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Waikato |
Holly Alysha Thorpe is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Waikato, specialising in sports sociology.
Thorpe was a competitive snowboarder.[1] She completed a PhD titled Boarders, Babes and Bad-Asses: Theories of a Female Physical Youth Culture at the University of Waikato in 2007. Thorpe then joined the faculty of the university, rising to full professor in 2019.[2] Her inaugural professorial lecture described how new sports like snowboarding came to be included in the Olympic Games.[3] Her research covers gender, youth, extreme and action sports and how sport can contribute to development.[1][3]
Thorpe is a principal investigator in the Te Pūnaha Matatini Centre of Research Excellence.[4][5] She has written five books and edited a further nine.[6] Thorpe is a founding member of WHISPA, a High Performance Sport NZ working group on healthy women in sport.[7]
In 2009 Thorpe was awarded a scholarship by the Leverhulme Trust to visit the University of Brighton, where she wrote a book about snowboarding culture.[1]
Thorpe was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2011 to visit Georgetown University to compare the extreme sport experiences of New Zealand and American children and youth.[8][1] and a Leverhulme Fellowship.[4] In 2018 she was awarded a Royal Society Early Career Research Excellence Award for Social Sciences, and in the same year was awarded Fellowship of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.[4]
Thorpe was awarded a James Cook Research Fellowship in 2021, for research titled 'Reconceptualizing Wellbeing: Women, Sport and Communities of Belonging'.[9] Her project explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, and their strategies for maintaining connection, wellbeing and physical health during the pandemic.[9][10]