David L. Andrews is a Professor within the Physical Cultural Studies Research Group in the Department of Kinesiology.

Professor Andrews most recent book focuses on the cultural politics of contemporary sport culture, and is entitled Making Sport Great Again: The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture (2019, Palgrave Macmillan).  At present he is working on a book titled Articulating Trump’s America: Sport, Politics, and the Culture Wars (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press).  This book aims to critically explicate sport’s direct and indirect, explicit and implicit, strategic and contingent politicization, as both an outgrowth–and simultaneously an accelerant–of the U.S.’ rightward turn over the past 40 years, of which the rise of Trump populism is the latest manifestation. He is also presently working on an edited anthology (in conjunction with Holly Thorpe and Joshua Newman) titled Sport and Physical Culture in Global Pandemic Times: COVID Assemblages (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan).

Other publications include: Sport-Commerce-Culture: Essays on Sport in Late Capitalist America (2006. Peter Lang); The Blackwell Companion to Sport (edited with Ben Carrington, 2013, Blackwell), and Sport and Neoliberalism: Politics, Consumption, and Culture (edited with Michael Silk, 2012, Temple University Press); The Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies (edited with Michael Silk and Holly Thorpe, 2017, Routledge); and,  Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies (edited with Holly Thorpe and Joshua Newman, 2020, Rutgers University Press). He serves as the associate editor of the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, and has served on the editorial boards/editoral advisory boards of the Sociology of Sport Journal, the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Communication & Sport, Celebrity Studies, and Leisure Studies. In addition, he serves as the co-editor (with Stephen Wagg) of the Global Culture and Sport book series (Palgrave Macmillan).

Broadly speaking, Professor Andrews’ research critically examines physical culture as a complex empirical assemblage (including, but not restricted to, sport, fitness, exercise, recreation, leisure, wellness, dance, and health-related movement practices). Informed by various understandings of classical and contemporary cultural theory (including those underpinning cultural studies, the Frankfurt School, and assemblage theory), Professor Andrews’ approach considers physical culture as both a product and producer of the cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and environmental dimensions of contemporary society. Among other foci, he analyzes the complex interconnections linking physical culture with the structures and strictures of late capitalism, related systems of neoliberal governance, and the nature of life within the contemporary metropolis. The overarching aim of this research is to illuminate the ways that active bodies become organized, disciplined, represented, embodied, and/or experienced in mobilising (or corroborating), or at times immobilizing (or resisting), the dominant power relations operating within society that differentiate between the empowered and disempowered, the privileged and under-privileged.