Laura Misener is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology at Western University, Canada. Her work critically examines numerous ways that sport events have been purported to positively affect community development, social infrastructure, social inclusion, and healthy lifestyles of community members. Dr. Misener has led several large scale research funded projects including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada/Sport Canada funded project upon which this book is based. She is also a co-investigator on two other SSHRC funded projects focusing on events and sport participation outcomes. She is an advisor on the Ontario Parasport Legacy group, a strategic outcome of the hosting the 2015 Parapan American Games in Toronto. In addition, she is a member of the International Paralympic Committee Impacts and Legacies Working Group. Dr. Misener’s work has been published widely including internationally ranked journals such as Journal of Sport Management, Managing Leisure, and Disability and Society. She has been an invited speaker of the International Paralympic Committee at the International Convention on Science, Education, and Medicine in Sport (Pre-Olympic Congress 2012 & 2016). She recently co-edited a Special Issue of Sport Management Review on Managing Disability Sport. She is currently on editorial boards of a number of highly ranked journals including Sport Management Review, and Journal of Sport and Tourism. She is an Associate Editor for Leisure Sciences.
Gayle McPherson holds a Chair in Events and Cultural Policy within the School of Media, Culture and Society at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. Her research interests revolve around the interventions of the local and national state and wider agencies in events and festivity of all types and the social and cultural impacts of large scale events on communities. She is particularly interested in the contested role of events in leveraging social change. She is currently a co-investigator on the international collaborative research project Leveraging Parasport Events for Sustainable Community Participation. She has recently completed a digital literacy practice research project around the Commonwealth Games 2014. She is also interested in the role of events and culture in cultural diplomacy as a soft power initiative between nations and states. She is currently acting as the Legacy and Evaluation advisor to Paisley 2021 UK City of Culture Bid team. She is a member of European Cultural Parliament and teaches at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. She is co-author of Event Policy: From Theory to Strategy (Routledge, 2011), co-author of Music Entrepreneurship (Bloomsbury, 2016) and co-editor of Research Themes for Events (CABI, 2013). Dr. McPherson has published widely the events, culture and festivals area, including in Leisure Studies, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events and Annals of Leisure Research. She is also a reviewer for numerous granting agencies including Carnegie Trust, and Irish Research Council for Humanities & Social Sciences, and highly ranked scholarly outlets such as Journal of Cultural Trends, International Journal of Cultural Policy and Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure & Events.
David McGillivray holds a Chair in Event and Digital Cultures at University of the West of Scotland, UK. His research interests focus on a critical reading of the contemporary significance of events and festivals (sporting and cultural) as markers of identity and mechanisms for the achievement of wider economic, social and cultural externalities. His current research focuses on the value of digital media in enabling alternative readings of major sport events to find currency within the saturated media landscape. He is also a co-investigator on a major UK-Canadian collaborative project exploring the role of sport events for persons with a disability in influencing community accessibility and community perceptions of disability. He is co-author of Event Policy: From Theory to Strategy (Routledge, 2011), co-editor of Research Themes for Events (CABI, 2013), Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2016) and co-author of Event Bidding (Routledge, 2017). He has published extensively in the fields of event and sport, including in Leisure Studies, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events and most recently in Urban Studies and the Annals of Leisure Research. He is currently Deputy Editor of the Annals of Leisure Research.
David Legg is a Professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. His areas of focus are in sport management and adapted physical activity. As a volunteer David has attended six Paralympic Games and four Parapan American Games in various roles including as President of the Canadian Paralympic Committee and as national television colour commentary for wheelchair rugby at 2015 Toronto Parapan American Games. David is currently a member of the International Paralympic Committee's Sport Science Committee. David has been a visiting scholar at Deakin University in Australia, Dalhousie University in Canada, an Adjunct Faculty at Memorial University in Canada and Research Fellow at Northeastern University in the United States. David has also taught for 5 years in the Erasmus Mundus Masters of Adapted Physical Activity at KU Leuven in Belgium. He has been on the editorial board for the International Journal of Sport Management and International Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance Journal of Research. He co-edited the first book on Paralympic Legacies (2010) and has published extensively in the areas of Paralympic history and inclusion.
