Rate My Professor Marcelle Dawson

Professor Marcelle Dawson serves as a Professor in the Sociology, Gender Studies and Criminology programme within the School of Social Sciences, Division of Humanities, at the University of Otago. She holds an MA from Rand Afrikaans University and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. Her research platform encompasses four interrelated themes: social movements and popular protest, social identities, alternative futures, and cognitive justice. Dawson investigates social transformation with a particular emphasis on alternatives to capitalism. She also contributes to the programme as International Exchange Adviser and supervises postgraduate students as primary and co-supervisor.

Dawson's scholarly output includes highly cited works on resistance, identity, and social change, often drawing from contexts in South Africa. Key publications feature the article 'CrossFit: Fitness cult or reinventive institution?' (2017, International Review for the Sociology of Sport), 'Rehumanising the university for an alternative future: Decolonisation, alternative epistemologies and cognitive justice' (2020, Identities), and chapters such as 'The potential, perils, and pitfalls of CrossFit: An introduction' (2025, in CrossFit: Commodity, community, contested terrain). She co-edited CrossFit: Commodity, Community, Contested Terrain (2025, Palgrave Macmillan) with Steve J. Jackson. Other notable books are Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa (2010, co-edited with William Beinart), Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First-Century South Africa (2012, co-authored with Luke Sinwell), and Globalisation and New Identities: A View from the Middle (2006, co-authored with Peter Alexander and Meera Ichharam). Additional contributions include 'The cost of belonging: Exploring class and citizenship in Soweto's water war' (2010, Citizenship Studies) and 'Ethical and political challenges of participatory action research in the academy' (2016, in Research Ethics and Social Movements). She presented 'Stand-up comedy as a site for imagining decolonial futures' as an invited talk in 2024.