Rate My Professor Mark Falcous

Associate Professor Mark Falcous serves in the School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences within the Sciences Division at the University of Otago, where he has been a faculty member since 2002. His academic qualifications include a BA (Hons) and PGCE from De Montfort University, an MA from Queen's University, and a PhD from Loughborough University. Falcous's research specializations lie within the sociology of sport, with particular interests in sport and the media, globalisation and the local-global nexus, sport and social theory, and interpretive methodology. He contributes to the academic community through teaching courses such as SPEX208 Sociology of Sport and Exercise, SPEX312 Advanced Sociology of Sport, and SPEX401 Research Methods in Sport, Exercise and Health. Additionally, he supervises postgraduate research, currently overseeing theses on topics like the representation of the 1981 Springbok Tour and diversity and inclusion in sport organizations, and has guided several PhD completions, including studies on sociocultural constraints influencing Brazilian football players, sustainable outdoor education in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the early Olympic movement in New Zealand.

Falcous maintains an extensive publication record reflecting his research foci. Recent contributions include 'Narrating multiculturalism: Lydia Ko, model minorities, and the mediated Kiwi sporting nation' with G. Scott (2026, Journal of Sport & Social Issues), 'Beyond greatness? 11 days in Ōteopoti-Dunedin' with M. Poingdestre (2025, Routledge), 'Cycling tribes: Lifestyles, values, and aesthetics' with M. Masucci (2025, Annals of Leisure Research), and chapters in the Handbook on Sport and Migration, which he co-edited with J. Maguire and K. Liston (2024, Edward Elgar Publishing), covering cultural hybridity in capoeira and international student-athletes in basketball. Highly cited works include 'Sport and migration: Borders, boundaries and crossings' (2010, Routledge; 293 citations), 'Globetrotters and local heroes? Labor migration, basketball, and local identities' (2005, Sociology of Sport Journal; 163 citations), 'One day in September and a week in February: Mobilizing American (sporting) nationalisms' (2005; 110 citations), and 'Olympic bidding, multicultural nationalism, terror, and the epistemological violence of “Making Britain Proud”' (2010; 84 citations). These publications underscore his influence on sociocultural analyses of sport involving media, migration, nationalism, and globalization.