Rate My Professor Mark Mierzwinski

Mierzwinski's research specializes in figurational sociology, focusing on how social justice is constructed and enacted in sports, education, and healthcare settings, particularly athlete welfare, duty of care, language, discrimination, banter, and bullying. He has led or co-led funded projects on rurality as a health inequality, post-16 access to colleges, and improving racial literacy among undergraduate sport students. He contributed to a funded report on 'Bullying in School Sport' for the Ben Cohen Stand-Up Foundation and a partnership report on combatting loneliness through sport. Key publications include 'A figurational analysis of boys’ and girls’ banter in secondary Physical Education' (2025, Sport, Education and Society, with Matthew Green), 'Women’s Experiences in the Mixed Martial Arts: A Quest for Excitement?' (2014, Sociology of Sport Journal, with Philippa Velija and Dominic Malcolm), 'Extra-curricular sport: A figurational analysis of gendered activity provision, behavioural expectations, and peer group dynamics in one secondary school in England' (2025, European Physical Education Review, with Matthew Green), and '‘It is hard to establish boundaries’: Pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of blurred lines between banter and bullying in secondary Physical Education' (2025, European Physical Education Review, with Matthew Green). Outside academia, he chairs a longstanding community charity and coaches football and cricket for children, holding memberships in the Professional Footballers Association, Football Association, and England and Wales Cricket Board.