Research
Academics
Research
Fellows
Dr Xiao Liang
Xiao is a Postdoctoral researcher in Sport Policy and Management.
Her principal research interests are sport policy and major event legacy/impact. She focuses specifically on the impact of major events on the socioeconomic development of local small and medium-sized enterprises.
Her research is distinguished by its interdisciplinary nature and by it extending the target of event impact studies from the traditional macro-level beneficiaries to the micro-level beneficiaries.
Twitter = @liangxiaosz
Dr Andrew Hayes
Postdoctoral researcher in sport integrity and clean sport. PhD in performance enhancing drug use in sport and education. Other academic interests include sport policy and major event legacy. Member of the WADA Social Science Research Expert Advisory Group and Chair of the UK Athletics Athletes’ Commission. Current GB international distance runner.
Dr Abdullah Alharbi
Abdullah studied his PhD at the University of Birmingham detecting emotional intensity in text.
Barnaby Carter
Barnaby is a final year PhD candidate, currently awaiting VIVA, with a specialism in anabolic-androgenic steroid dependence. Other academic interests include image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) and associated harms, muscle dysmorphia, and motivations for IPED use. Future ambitions include becoming a full-time researcher and lecturer in the field of IPEDs to aid in the development of education around IPED associated harm reduction.
Twitter = @ph_res
Maria Karamani
International Working Group Coordinator.
Maria studies her PhD at the University of Birmingham and her research focuses on empowering the voices of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) by implementing an innovative approach the Inclusive Inquiry (II) as a research tool in special schools.
Her research interests lies with the area of special needs and how to empower the voices of SEND population with the aim to better understand disabled students’ lived experiences of inclusion/exclusion in schools. Other academic interests involve disability research and how to advance methodological knowledge about ways to conduct participatory research inclusively.
Zhaoyu Duan
Zhaoyu is a last year PhD student. His research interests are the benefits of sport/physical activity participation, particularly the social benefits and mental health development. He will focus on disadvantaged populations to make his own contribution to public health and sustainable social development.
Qi Wang
Qi is a third-year PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Her research examines post-event leveraging and participation legacies of major sporting events through qualitative approaches, with a current focus on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Dr Mengying Niu
(Nimi )
Nimi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Centre-UB. She is interested in using digital storytelling method to explore the interconnections between memory, impact and legacy within the context of major sporting events. Her fellowship focuses on impacts and legacies of major sporting events and grassroots storytelling (https://www.centre-ub.org/research/projects/leveraging-major-sporting-events-for-community-engagement-and-legacy-from-birmingham-2022-to-the-2026-european-athletics-championships/). Please do not hesitate to contact her for interdisciplinary research collaboration.
Dr. Tingyu Hou
Tingyu Hou obtained her PhD in Sport Sciences from Waseda University, Japan. During her doctoral studies, she conducted two research visits at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on community sport and sport events, with a particular emphasis on older adult populations. Her work aims to integrate management and policy perspectives in sport, contributing to the development of inclusive, sustainable, and socially beneficial community sport initiatives. She is skilled in quantitative analysis and model building, and seeks to contribute data-driven insights to collaborative research projects.
Wenbo Ma
Wenbo is a second-year PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital technology, and sport management. His doctoral work examines how AI-mediated smart fitness platforms reshape service delivery and value creation within China's fitness industry, drawing on Service-Dominant Logic and service ecosystem theory.
Yang Ye
Yang Ye is a Second-year PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on smart stadiums from a socio-technical and governance perspective, positioning them as micro-level extensions of smart city systems. His research interests on how technological infrastructures are operationalised into services through a ‘service activation’ layer, linking supply-side innovation with demand-side user experiences, with empirical research centred on smart stadiums in China. By integrating insights from smart city research, his work seeks to advance understanding of value creation and institutional processes in digitally enabled stadiums
Lanfu (Randolph) Liu
Liu is a first-year PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on sports media and sports mega-events, examining how state-linked news institutions construct national legitimacy through mediated narratives.
His work adopts a production-oriented approach, analysing how abstract geopolitical goals are translated into routinised and distributable story forms through processes such as framing, attribution, and voice. Empirically, he conducts a comparative study of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.
His research aims to advance understanding of how narrative production shapes legitimacy and national identity in global media systems.