About

Bryan C. Clift is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at North Carolina State University and holds an honorary position as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath. His research is oriented around two interrelated strands: the relationship between sport, physical activity, and recreation within the cultural economy—covering topics such as events, communities, urbanism, and media—and issues of inequalities. He specializes in qualitative research methods and has contributed to scholarly discussions through co-editing books on populism in sport, leisure, and popular culture, as well as on vulnerability in qualitative research. Clift has an extensive publication record, including journal articles and book chapters, focusing on themes such as urban homelessness, community governance, gendered self in sport, and the politics of major sporting events. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Kinesiology from the University of Maryland, a Graduate Certificate in Critical Theory, an M.A. in Education, Recreation and Leisure Studies from the University of Georgia, and a B.Sc. in Recreation, Sport, and Tourism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Political Science
• Law
• Environmental health
• Public relations
• Economics
• Family medicine
• Internal medicine
• Emergency medicine
• Virology
• Medical emergency
• Physical therapy
• Economic growth
• Surgery
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Running to Recover or Running for Recovery? Bodies in Context

  2026-02-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Fundamental challenging considerations in hosting sporting mega-events

  2025-10-27

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter considers the dimensions of hosting sporting mega-events (SMEs) for cities and nations to better recognize and understand their major societal and economic implications. The practical focus of this chapter is on the ways in which SMEs have historically taken shape on the ground, thus raising questions about how SME bids and plans translate to real-world impact.

  PublisherDOI

• Governing Paralympians: A Media Discourse Analysis of Disability and Gender in China

  Communication & Sport · 2025-08-04

  articleOpen access

  This paper uses Foucauldian-influenced discourse analysis to explore the governance of disability and gender in Chinese print media during the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. Drawing on 38 articles published in China Daily , a state-affiliated newspaper, this study examines the media representations of Paralympians and, more importantly, the ways in which gendered and disabled subject positions are constituted, negotiated, and regulated. The analysis illustrates how ableism and sexism persist in representations of Paralympians under the guise of neoliberal governance and heterosexual assumptions. In addition, Chinese para-athletes are particularly disciplined by normative, state-sanctioned gender ideals within a prevailing atmosphere of nationalism. Overall, this study offers a critique of discursive strategies of inclusionism in Chinese media practices at the intersection of gender and disability.

  PublisherDOI

• The spectacle of non-violence: deactivating territorial stigmatization in favela representations in the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Opening Ceremonies

  Urban Geography · 2025-04-29

  article1st author

  Sport Mega-Events (SMEs) have been widely used as opportunities to promote and (re)brand host cities to domestic and international audiences. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, marginalized or stigmatized urban places do not feature heavily in urban representations during SME opening ceremonies despite the complex relationship between SMEs, redevelopment and urban marginality. However, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro marked a departure from this trend. While the Brazilian Olympic Committee (BOC) aimed to present the city as vibrant, colorful and safe, they also incorporated marginalized urban spaces–the city’s favelas–into event-related promotions. We introduce the concept of deactivation to analyze the representations of favelas during the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony. We suggest that the complexity of urban marginality and territorial stigmatization is erased through cultural representations that foreground empowerment and challenges to socio-spatial stigmas. In doing so, the favela is (re)imagined as a romanticized spectacle for external consumption that works to make them legible for capital accumulation, pacification, and the displacement of their inhabitants.

  PublisherDOI

• Parting Thoughts XXXXVII: What Do we Want to Count for the Field? Creative Outputs in an Interdisciplinary Leisure Studies

  Leisure Sciences · 2025-04-08

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Physical activity during and after a residential rehabilitation programme for people living with axial spondyloarthritis: a qualitative exploration of patient and health care professional perspectives

  Psychology and Health · 2025-12-09

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: To explore the experiences of people living with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), and views of health care professionals (HCPs), on physical activity engagement and maintenance during and after a structured physiotherapy led residential rehabilitation programme. METHODS AND MEASURES: Nineteen individuals with axSpA who attended a two-week residential rehabilitation programme, and nine HCPs were recruited. Patient focus groups and HCP interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematic analysis was conducted. Where appropriate, self-determination theory was used in the interpretation and discussion of inductively constructed themes. RESULTS: Four key themes were identified: Interactions within the social environment (Immersion, Group dynamic, Interactions with health care professionals, Interactions with family and others); Adjusting to PA (Enjoyment & interest, Balance & body awareness, Routine & habit, Feedback); Transformative experience (Education as a foundation, Perception of PA, Ownership, Visible difference); and Psychological challenges (Frustration, Guilt, Fear, Normalisation). CONCLUSION: Rehabilitation programmes for people with axSpA should be holistic. Framing PA in terms of enjoyment, instead of purely for health, may support PA maintenance. For HCPs, creating a more socially supportive environment, involving important others, and focusing on techniques to support autonomous motivation can help those with axSpA maintain PA after a rehabilitation programme.

  PublisherDOI

• Collective Memory Work in Sport and Physical Activity

  2024-05-16

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  One novel and yet under-utilized participatory and praxis-oriented methodology in sport and physical activity is collective memory work. Developed initially by Frigga Haug and colleagues as an approach to understanding women’s socialization experiences, memory work has since been taken up in areas such as psychology and emotion, education and pedagogy, and notably in collective biography. The feminist-rooted methodology involves small groups of researcher/participants who share, discuss, write, and analyze their memories for the purpose of interrogating taken-for-granted assumptions about and power dynamics immersed within our pasts, relationships, and selves around a common focus. To stimulate further use of memory work in sport and physical activity, this chapter focuses upon the practical processes of conducting memory work with participants – that is, how memories are worked (analyzed) amongst a group. The structure of this chapter is as follows: (1) introduction of the methodology and key terms in memory work analyses; (2) the methodology’s development, key authors, and disciplinary uptake; (3) a flexible approach to analyzing memories; (4) a discussion of examples from our work; and (5) reflections on analytical challenges (e.g., power dynamics, authorship, creativity, and representation) and possibilities within sport and physical activity research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• PPE: Pockets, Perceptions and Equity – the untold truth of ill-fitting PPE; a reflexive thematic analysis

  International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics · 2024-10-08 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Personal protective equipment (PPE) is worn in a range of industrial environments by women and men alike. However, the majority of PPE is designed around male anthropometrics and the impacts of this on women are largely undocumented. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to develop themes from in-depth interviews with 30 women working in diverse roles in industrial environments, around their experiences of wearing PPE. Four themes developed: 'There's nothing here for me'; 'Collateral damage'; 'Organisational culture and the burden of responsibility'; and 'Personally protective women'. The findings significantly expand upon previous literature concerning: the reduced range of PPE available for women when compared with men; considerable fit and comfort issues; and physical, day-to-day and health-related consequences. This work evidences the increased PPE-related burden on women, and demonstrates fundamental links between women wearing ill-fitting or inappropriate PPE and their reduced sense of belonging, confidence and morale.

  PublisherDOI

• A new direction for neighbourhood governance and community construction in China: the case of Zhejiang province’s ‘Future Communities’

  Space and Polity · 2024-05-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  In March 2019, Zhejiang province introduced a new approach to China’s neighbourhood governance, placing digital technology at the centre of communities. Utilizing a case study design, we examine this approach and the role of technology in cultivating community autonomy, public participation, and local social interaction. The findings show how sociospatial dynamics guide the orchestration and reception of smart innovations for community engagement and empowerment, indicating what works and for whom. The empirical work provides a basis for future recommendations, signalling the limitations of digital innovation within communal life and reinforcing a human-centred approach to developing smart systems of community development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>"É nossa, é Do Brasil Inteiro”</i> (It’s Ours, It’s for the Whole of Brazil”): Football, The Yellow Shirt, National Politics, and Conjunctural Contestation

  Leisure Sciences · 2024-08-09 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  From a resonant and highly mythologized symbol of an imagined national coherence in the 1950s, today the iconic yellow Brazilian football (soccer) shirt–the amarelinha–is an emotive site for political contestation and struggle between the forces of the Brazilian right and left. Within a contemporary Brazilian conjuncture fraught by conjoined political, economic, and cultural schisms, the shirt has become what Stuart Hall (p. 354) referred to as a "constant battlefield" upon which warring national political ideologies and imaginaries have fought for ascendancy. In contextually mapping the shifting and increasingly contentious relationship between the amarelinha and the Brazilian national imaginary, we utilize a critical conjuncturalism in critically explicating three indicative moments: 1) the shirt's historical articulation, and initial relative stasis, as a symbol of a modern Brazilian national unity, pride, and optimism in the period from the 1950s to 2010s; 2) the disarticulation and hijacking of the shirt by an emergent right-wing populist movement during the mid-2010s, vanguarded by future President Jair Bolsonaro, and visibly supported by many popular athletes (i.e. Neymar, Nelson Piquet); and 3) the subsequent rearticulation of the shirt, and indeed the national political imaginary, by the countervailing forces of the Brazilian political left including leading journalists and athletes (i.e. Richarlison, Walter Casagrande). As such, our aim is to contextually examine how the shirt has, in a dialectical sense, become both a product and producer of the ideological and affective schisms responsible for the fraying (yet also potentially rebuilding) of Brazilian national identity and society.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robert H. Mann

  University of Exeter

  9 shared

• Alan R. Barker

  University of Exeter

  8 shared

• Renée T. Clift

  University of Arizona

  6 shared

• David L. Andrews

  University of Maryland, College Park

  6 shared

• Carly McKay

  University of Bath

  6 shared

• Jessica Francombe-Webb

  6 shared

• Sheree Bekker

  University of Bath

  6 shared

• Ioannis Costas Batlle

  University of Bath

  5 shared

Labs

• Bryan Clift's LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Forest Biometrics

  North Carolina State University

  1990

• M.S., Forest Resources

  University of Idaho

  1985

• B.S., Forest Resources

  University of Idaho

  1983