Tara Magdalinski

Professor Tara Magdalinski completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Human Movement Studies at The University of Queensland, focussing on the sociological and historical aspects of the sport. Following ten years as a founding member of the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Sunshine Coast, in 2007 she moved to University College Dublin to take up a position in sports management, where she was the Head of Subject for Sports Management and the Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy, and Sports Science.

She returned to Australia in 2016 to take up a position as Associate Dean, Learning Innovation in the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Tara has published widely in the area of sports studies, focussing on exploring the interface between performance technologies, nature, and the athletic body to try to understand concerns about “unnatural” enhancement and expectations of “authenticity” in sport.

Her well-reviewed research monograph, Sport, Technology and the Body: The Nature of Performance (Routledge 2008), examines these issues in detail. Tara also co-edited (with Timothy Chandler), With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion (London, Routledge, 2002), and her most recent book, Study Skills in Sports Studies (Abingdon: Routledge), was released in May 2013. She is currently working on a project examining the use of digital technology in performance sport and is writing an introductory book that examines the study of sport in a multidisciplinary context.