Play It Forward Researchers
Welcome to Play It Forward Researchers, the home of research by sportspeople, about sportspeople.
Set up by Switch the Play, our goal is to share insights from those who have experienced sport as an athlete to advance the knowledge of duty of care in sport.
Professor David Lavallee, Professor of Duty of Care in Sport at Abertay University, chairs the Play It Forward Researchers panel. The panel is made up of experts in the fields of athlete wellbeing and reviews all academic submissions, approving those to feature on the platform.
Research topics covered include athlete career transition, personal development and mental wellbeing. All of the researchers featured want to contribute to future generations of sportspeople by sharing and engaging in work that helps pass on (or pay forward) their experiences in positive ways.
The Panel
The panel is made up of experts in duty of care in sport with a wide range of experience including sport psychology, athlete transition and coaching sciences. They are:
- Professor David Lavallee
- Dr Emma Kavanagh
- Kelly Massey OLY
- Kieron Achara OLY
- Dr Natalie Campbell
Read more about the panel by
Why Should I Submit Research?
In line with our commitment to supporting the personal development of current and former sportspeople we want this initiative to be of value to yourselves. Our commitment is to provide a digital platform with supporting communications to promote you and your research widely to help support other athletes and the sector. We hope that promoting your work can also potentially create opportunities for you.
As well as being a platform to share valuable insights through the unique lens of athletes, the Play It Forward project also provides an opportunity to promote the research to the wider sports sector.
All successful submissions are promoted through the work Switch the Play does to improve wellbeing in sport and will be seen by athletes, National Governing Bodies (NGBs), sports clubs and organisations. Our aim is to better inform and support the learning and adaptation by duty of care practitioners and policymakers whilst opening opportunities for the research authors.
We accept research from both current or former sportspeople who have competed in high performance sport and led research related to an area covered in Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s 2017 independent report into duty of care in sport. In this review, Baroness Grey-Thompson spoke about 7 key areas in relation to Duty of Care, they were:
- Education
- Transition
- Representation of the participant's voice
- Equality, diversity and inclusion
- Safeguarding
- Mental Welfare
- Safety, injury and medical issues
Not a sportsperson?
We still want to hear about your research.
Separately, we are creating a knowledge sharing platform on the Switch the Play website that will highlight research written by other experts in duty of care. Please email us if you would like your work to be featured.