Rate My Professor Millicent Kennelly

Dr. Millicent Kennelly serves as Senior Lecturer in Event Management in the Department of Tourism and Marketing, Griffith Business School, Griffith University. She obtained her PhD from Griffith University in 2011. Kennelly is an experienced qualitative researcher whose work focuses on sport event leveraging and legacy, including sport event stakeholder experiences. Her research explores what sport events can achieve for core stakeholders and how they can perform better, with emphasis on event experiences—the ways events impact participants’ lives—event leveraging to strategically produce desirable outcomes in hosting communities, and broader effects on people, places, and the natural environment. She investigates participatory sport events, amateur athlete motivations, constraint negotiation in serious leisure, and risk management in events.

Kennelly teaches undergraduate and postgraduate event management courses, including 'Managing Projects in Service Industries' as convenor, and supervises doctoral students on sport management, event leveraging, and related topics. Her key publications encompass 'A qualitative exploration of participant motives among committed amateur triathletes' (Leisure Sciences, 2012, with M. Lamont; 169 citations), 'Costs and perseverance in serious leisure careers' (Leisure Sciences, 2014, with M.J. Lamont; 130 citations), 'Risk management and contingency planning in events: participants’ reactions to the cancellation of Ironman New Zealand 2012' (Event Management, 2014, with B.D. Moyle and M. Lamont), '"We’ve never measured it, but it brings in a lot of business”: Assessing the perceptions and economic impact of amateur sport events' (International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 2017), 'Experiences of amateur athletes’ non-participating entourage at participatory sport events' (Sport Management Review, 2018, with M. Lamont, P. Hillman, and B. Moyle), and 'Sport event legacy: A systematic quantitative review of literature' (Sport Management Review, 2019, with A. Thomson et al.; 312 citations). She earned the ANZALS 2013 Best Publication Award for an Early Career Researcher for 'Constraint negotiation in serious leisure – A study of amateur triathletes' (Journal of Leisure Research). Kennelly co-guest edited a special issue of Journal of Sport & Tourism on Active Sport Tourism (2015-2018). Her scholarship influences event planning, sport organizations, and community leveraging strategies for social, economic, and environmental benefits.