Research

• Sociology of the body and sport
• Physicality of learning and self-education
• Competitive sport with children and young people
• Subjectivation and self-organisation in sports teams
• Technisation, digitalisation and mediatisation in sport
• Social construction of talent (especially in youth competitive football)
• Game and performance analyses in elite sport
• Techniques of self- and body optimisation
• Connections between social inequality, physical activity and health behaviour
• Methods of qualitative social research (in particular ethnography, videography and interviews)
• Theories of practice, culture and subjectivisation
  

Habilitation project (completed)

"Body - knowledge - objects. Empowerment in constellations of shared practice. Empirical findings, theoretical reflections and methodological considerations with special consideration of team and competitive sports training"

Abstract of the cumulative habilitation thesis:

The thesis explores - particularly on various 'playing fields' of team/competitive sports training, but also with 'side glances' at other social areas (e.g. school, science, work) - the question of how people practice things together, thereby creating social orders and at the same time enabling themselves to act in these orders in a way that is socially understandable and recognisable. To this end, various methods of qualitative social research are used to 'zoom in' on the 'natural' habitats of empirical (training) practice and attention is focused on the observable constellations of people, bodies and objects, technologies and practical knowledge in which orders and 'their' subjects materialise and are 'made'. The collected essays deal, among other things, with the individual and collective 'co-playing skills' that participants must acquire in order to carry out practices together. They analyse the socio-material arrangements of bodies, objects and technologies in which the necessary skills are learned and taught and in which criteria of competent co-playing and (good) performance are put up for discussion and negotiated. They also investigate failures of interventions, moments of incapacity and incapacitation as well as experiences of failure and disappointment, which are empirically extremely common, but have rarely been analysed scientifically in the light of a prominent interest in the principles of success and performance enhancement. They problematise open and subtle conflicts, differences and 'power games' that can arise in joint practice and empowerment processes between different participants. They explore the extent to which the local events of shared practice are also shaped by the institutionalised framework conditions of the social field in which these events take place. And they shed light on how participants are not only enabled to play along in practices according to predetermined criteria, but also open up scope for doing things differently and undermining established orders precisely through the incorporation of guidelines, thereby appearing as (conditionally) sovereign subjects.

With its thematic focus, the book firstly addresses research desiderata in sports science. Secondly, it makes contributions to (praxeological) theoretical and methodological discussions. And finally, thirdly, it also opens up perspectives for educational science: sport and training are seen as instructive cases in which observation strategies can be tested and insights gained - e.g. into the physical-objective dimensions of ability and knowledge processes, the dynamics of achieving and evaluating performance and the production of and dealing with dis/ability - that are also relevant for other (institutional) contexts of learning and teaching or the subjectivisation of 'teachers' and 'learners'.