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LYNDSAY HAYHURST
Lyndsay Hayhurst is a qualitative, feminist participatory action researcher who works collaboratively with community partners on issues of social justice and inequities in/through sport/leisure/recreation in a variety of contexts. She is a Tier 2 York Research Chair in Sport, Gender & Climate Mobility Justice through Digital Participatory Research, and the Director of the DREAMING Sport Collaboratory (Digital participatory Research in Equity, Access, Mobility, Innovation aNd Gender in Sport). She is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is also a faculty associate in CITY Institute, the Centre for Feminist Research, the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research and Graduate Program in Development Studies at York University.
In 2017, Lyndsay was recognized with a Sociology of Sport Journal’s Early Career Researcher Award; and in 2024 she was a co-author for its Outstanding Paper Award. She has secured over $12M in research funding from SSHRC, CFI, Abuse-Free Sport Canada and PHAC. Her work critically examines equity, inclusion, mobility justice, and climate justice, particularly with/for equity-owed groups, including women (*cis and trans) and gender-diverse youth.
She is co-author of Sport, Gender and Development: Intersections, Innovations and Future Trajectories (with Holly Thorpe and Megan Chawansky, 2021). She has published extensively in leading journals such as Women’s Studies International Forum; Mobilities; Gender, Place & Culture; Third World Quarterly, and the Sociology of Sport Journal.
She also co-directed and executive produced the documentary Changing Gears (2024), which focuses on bicycles, development and mobility justice and is being screened globally in partnership with the UNEP. Lyndsay’s has previously worked for the UNDP and Right to Play, and her research continues to inform policy, advocacy, and curriculum development in sport, physical culture, and social justice for a variety of local, national and global sport for development organizations.
View: Sport, Gender and Development: Intersections, Innovations and Future Trajectories
Lyndsay’s past and current research focuses on three interconnected areas:
1. Girl-focused sport for development interventions, particularly those that aim to: a) prevent gender-based violence through self-defence activities such as boxing and martial arts; and b) improve the sexual and reproductive health, education and socio-economic status of young marginalized women and girls through sport, particularly Indigenous youth in the global North (Canada and Australia) and in Sub-Saharan Africa;
2. The unintended consequences and impacts that global gender-focused development campaigns – which position girls as agents of social change (e.g., as situated vis-à-vis Nike Foundation’s “Girl Effect” campaign) – have on targeted beneficiaries, their nations, families and communities; and
3. Community-engaged, postcolonial feminist participatory action research that explores the growing involvement of non-state actors (e.g., corporations, non-government organizations, private foundations, etc.) in the development and “empowerment” of young women and girls through sport for development interventions (particularly in the global South and in Indigenous communities across the global North).
Lyndsay is incredibly proud of the students she has had the privilege to work with, many of whom have won a number of outstanding awards, fellowships and scholarships such as those from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Ontario Graduate Scholarships.
York University, Faculty of Health - School of Kinesiology & Health Science
Norman Bethune College - BC, Keele Campus
https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/
https://bicyclesfordevelopment.ca/
Email: lhayhurs(AT)yorku.ca
Copyright © Lyndsay Hayhurst, 2026. All rights reserved.