Rate My Professor Marcelle Dawson

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.