Caroline Fusco

Caroline Fusco, Associate Professor, Social Justice & Equity in Sport

  • Associate Professor, Social Justice & Equity in Sport
55 Harbord Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2W6

About Caroline

Academic Training

PhD University of Toronto Community Health 2003

MSc University of Manitoba Physical Education 1995

Cert. in Educ. University of Ulster Physical Education 1986

BA University of Ulster Sports Studies 1985

Graduate Student Recruitment Status
Accepting PhD and MSc students
Research Interests

Space, place, land, physical cultural studies
Animals, ecological destruction and sports environments 
Children's play
Young people, health and environments
Social justice, equity and inclusion  
Gender/s, sexualities, the body
Poststructuralist and postcolonial theories
Ecological determinants and geographies of health
Qualitative/ethnographic/spatial methodologies

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Publications

Sher. C., & Fusco, C. (Accepted). Sports and sustainable development: The troubling absence of meat sourcing policies in the sports sector. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

De Lisio, E. E. A., Fusco, C., Woodworth, S., & Taha-Thomure, R. (2023). Shelter in Place: Pandemic Prudentialism and Park Space in Toronto/Tkaronto. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 22(6), 1418–1441. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2288

Nachman, J., Joseph, Janelle., & Fusco, Caroline. (2021). ‘What if what the professor knows is not diverse enough for us?’: Whiteness in Canadian kinesiology programs. Sport Education and Society. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13573322.2021.1919613  

Gauthier, Viviane Soa, Joseph, Janelle., & Fusco, Caroline. (2021). Lessons from Critical Race Theory: Outdoor Experiential Education in Kinesiology. Journal of Experiential Education. Available at https://doi.org/10.1177/10538259211006739

Woodworth, S., & Fusco, C. (2021). Decolonizing autoethnography in kinesiology: Towards decolonial water education. The Journal of School & Society, 7(1), 91–110.

De Lisio, A. & Fusco, C. (2019). Creative Destruction: Zika, Lex Sportiva and (Alleged) Bodies of Contagion. Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 38(1), 1-30 

De Lisio, A., Yerashotis, G. & Fusco, C. (2019). Playing in the Shadow of Event Urbanism: Newcomer Youth, Neighborhood Change, and TO2015. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 2 (1+2), 195-218

Rodricks, D., Gallagher, K., Haag, J., Wortley, S., Fusco, C., DeLisio, A., DiCarlo, D., & McCready, L. (2018). Crossing Places: A Review of Urban Youth Policy 1960s–2010s. Cities Centre Research Paper 242: Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.

Rail, G., Molino, L., Fusco, C., Norman, M., Petherick., Polzer, J., Moola, F., Bryson, M. (2018). "HPV Vaccination Discourses and the Construction of "At-Risk" Girls".  Canadian Journal of Public Health

Nicholls, D.A., Jachyra, P., Gibson, B.E., Fusco, C., & Setchell. J. (2018). Keep fit: marginal ideas in contemporary therapeutic exercise. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 

Fusco, C. & McKeever, P. (2016). Cujo’s Crease: Deconstructing the Haunting Trompe-l’œil of a Cancer Treatment Room in a Children’s Hospital. Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies 15, 337-349

Faulkner, G., Mitra, R., Buliung, R., Fusco, C., & Stone, M. (2015) Children's outdoor playtime, physical activity, and parental perceptions of the neighbourhood environment. International Journal of Play, 4(1), 84-97

Alexander, S.A., Fusco, C., & Frohlich, K.L. (2015) “You have to do 60 minutes of physical activity per day… I saw it on TV.”: Children’s play narratives in the context of the public health discourse of playing for health. Sociology of Health & Illness, Special issue: Children, Health and Well-being: Policy Debates and Lived Experience), 37(2), 227-240.

Books

Alexander, S.A., Frohlich, K.L., & Fusco, C. (2018). Play, Physical Activity and Public Health
The Reframing of Children's Leisure Lives. London: Routledge.

Book Chapters

Fusco, C. (2019). Sexuality and sport. In George Ritzer and Chris Rojek, (Ed.), Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeoss109.pub2

Fusco, C. (2018). On being sick of humans in a post human world. For K. Gallagher (Ed.), The Methodological Dilemma Revisited: Creative, Critical and Collaborative Approaches to Qualitative Research for a New Era (pp. 113-136). London: Routledge. See https://www.routledge.com/The-Methodological-Dilemma-Revisited-Creative-Critical-and-Collaborative/Gallagher/p/book/9781138555143

Fusco, C. (2017). Healthified spaces. For D. Andrews, M. Silk & H. Thorpe (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies (pp. 355-368). New York: Taylor & Francis Books.

Buliung, R., Larsen, K., Faulkner, G., Fusco, C., & Rothman, L. (2015). Driven to school: social fears and traffic environments. In A. Walks, (ed.), The urban political economy and ecology of automobility: Driving cities, driving inequality, driving politics (pp. 81-99). London: Routledge.

Fusco, C. (2014). Transcending the (White) Straight Mind in Sport. In J. Hargreaves and E. Anderson (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Sport, Gender & Sexuality (pp. 435-442). London: Routledge.

Fusco, C. (2012). CRITICAL FEMINIST/QUEER Methodologies: Deconstructing (hetero)normative inscription/s. In Young, K. & Atkinson, M. (Eds). 2012. Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture (pp. 151-166). Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Currently Funded Projects

2019-2022, SSHRC Insight Development Grant (PI), “Sports should not cost the earth: Towards and interspecies equity-based sustainability, Funds Awarded $67,465.

2012-2023, SSHRC Partnership Grant, Co-Investigator, Neighbourhood Inequality, Diversity, and Change: Trends, Processes, Consequences, and Policy Options for Canada's Large Metropolitan Areas. (PI Dr. David Hulchanski, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto), SSHRC Partnership Grant, Funds Awarded: $2.5 million. [Subgrant: In the shadow of event-led urbanism: Neighbourhood, newcomer youth and TO2015, PI Caroline Fusco, Funds Awarded $14, 500]

2019, Developing a place-based theory and method to examine sport geographies and ecological degradation. PI Supervisor for Mark Corsetti for University of Toronto Excellence Award in the Social Sciences and Humanities (UTEA-SSH), Awaarded $6,000.

2018, PI Caroline Fusco; Multispecies contact zones: Considering the ecological impact of the hyper-consumption of animals and plastics in urban sports spaces. FKPE Internal Grant, $5,689.

2016, PI Caroline Fusco; Co-Applicant Amanda De Lisio. Economies of Deviance: Sex Work and The Sport Mega-Event: The Case of Zika and Moral Panic. SSHRC SIG Award, $4,216.

2015, Co-Supervisor with Dr. Michael Atkinson for Stephanie Woodworth recipient of 2015 University of Toronto Excellence Award in the Social Sciences and Humanities (UTEA-SSH), $6,000.

2014, PI, Caroline Fusco; Co-Applicants, Michelle Brownrigg, Day Milman. PanAm Pride: The Opportunity of the Games’ Positive Space in Physical Activity and Sport at University of Toronto, FKPE Internal Grant, $4,949.10.

Contracts

2011, Ontario Ministry of Education, Review and revision of the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum, Grades 9-12 from anti-discrimination, bias/inclusion perspective and accuracy of content/concepts related to anti-discrimination education. Role was to complete the (equity) bias check for the front matter, the HALE courses and the destination courses: Funds Awarded: $1500.00.

Ongoing Research Projects

The Change Room Project

The Change Room Project- Media Output

http://harthouse.ca/the-changeroom-project/

http://thevarsity.ca/2015/06/09/athletes-in-conversation/

http://news.utoronto.ca/toronto-2015-pan-amparapan-am-games-change-room-project

http://www.thestar.com/life/2015/07/19/change-room-project-promotes-tolerance-in-the-locker-room.html

http://www.ourwindsor.ca/community-story/5741623-change-room-project-promotes-tolerance-in-the-locker-room/

http://physical.utoronto.ca/News/2015/06/23/these-walls-cantalk-the-change-room-project   

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/dnto/change-room-project-highlights-the-lgbt-experiencein-locker-rooms-1.3341016   

Awards and Recognition

2016 Award of Excellence in Integration (For leadership in research and knowledge translation in the execution  of The Change Room Project at the University of Toronto), Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

2016  U of T’s Excellence Through Innovation Award (ETIA) for The Change Room Project (Human Resources and Equity, University of Toronto)

Supervised Theses

PhD

Erin Sullivan (current): Speciesism and sport

Chloe Sher (current): Life-course intersectionality: Gender, race, immigrant status, and inequality in physical activity

Katie Faust (current): Putting Grief in the Playbook: Spatializing Bereavement in Sport.

Teresa Hill (2023): Moving toward understanding: Negotiating physical activity and wellbeing while living in poverty.

Alexandra Maris (2022): Martial Art Destination Training Camps as Racial, Classed and Gendered Sporting Projects: A Case Study of a Camp in Thailand.

Danielle Di Carlo (2018) Cultivating democratic space? The case of specialist sports schools.

Amanda De Lisio (2016) Economies of flesh: Event-led urbanism the impact on sex work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

Stephanie Alexander (2014) Play in public health (co-supervised, K. Frohlich, Université de Montréal)

MSc

Caitlin Felteau-McInnis (current): A Socio-Cultural Interrogation of the Rocky Mountain Suicide Belt: Gender, Leisure, and Support in Ski Country 

Ali Greey (2019): Gender Transgressors: Exploring the Intersectional Experiences of Transgender and Gender Non-Binary Individuals in Locker Rooms.

Stephanie Woodworth (2018): Water, social justice and Physical Culture Studies.

Rachel Scarcello (2016): Ideologies of greatness and the production of space and subjects: A case study of the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport.

Undergraduate independent research project

Emma Karamanlian (2023-2024): Where’s the Queer in Kinesiology and U of T? A textual analysis of 2SLGBTQI histories, policies and practices

Emma Karamanlian (2022-2023): Bending Over Backwards: A Media Analysis of Abuse in Gymnastics Canada

Kyara Simoes (2022-2023): Environmental Sustainability Within Sport: The Development of Green Athletics in University

Mathieu Barnes (2019-2020): (Co-supervising with Dr. Margaret MacNeill):Exercise, Gender & Exclusion: Barriers and Facilitators of Transgender Exercise Participation

Viviane Gauthier (2019): (Co-supervising with Dr. Janelle Joseph): Outdoor Projects and legacies of racism and settler-colonialism.

Jessica Nachman (2019): (Co-supervising with Dr. Janelle Joseph): Whiteness in Ontario Kinesiology programs.

Mark Corsetti (2018): A Historical and Contemporary Analysis of Sex, Gender, and School Health and Physical Education Curricula (Sex-ed).

Sara Santos (2018): (Co-supervision with Dr. Kelly Arbour Nicotopolis): Student Narratives Surrounding Accessibility Within Physical Activity and Sport Spaces at the University of Toronto.

Ardavan Jafari (2016): Examining the Prohibition on Iranian Women’s Sports Spectatorship in Iran. 

Professional Memberships

American Association of Geographers
Canadian Association of Geographers
International Sociology of Sport Association