Rylee Dionigi

Biography

Associate Professor Rylee Dionigi has published widely in the fields of sport sociology, ageing and physical activity, health, exercise psychology, and leisure studies. She teaches in the sociology of active living and ageing, sport and exercise behavior and supervises students in the sociology of health and education. Dr Dionigi has expertise in qualitative methodologies and extensive knowledge on the personal and cultural meanings of sport and exercise participation in later life. In her book (research monograph), Competing for life: Older people, sport and ageing (2008), she argues that the phenomenon of older people competing in sport is a reflection of an ageist society which continues to value youthfulness over old age and reject multiple ways of ageing. Dr Dionigi (with Michael Gard) has edited a scholarly book called Sport and Physical Activity Across the Lifespan, with Palgrave Macmillan, UK which problematizes Sport for All policy and health promotion trajectories across the lifespan. This edited collection is distinctive because it provides a critical social science perspective on Sport for All or Sport for Life that is aged focused. It offers an array of theoretical and methodologically diverse perspectives on this topic, and highlights the intersections between different life stages and social, economic and cultural factors in the developed world. Overall, her work offers a critique of health promotion trajectories across the lifespan and calls for an acceptance of diversity and difference in older age.

Research Interest

how older people make sense of themselves and their experiences in the context of sport, leisure, health and ageing;