Bobbi Knapp | SIU

Sport Administration, Human Sciences

Dr. Knapp is an tenured Associate Professor of Sport Studies and current Program Director for the KIN 210 Diversity in Sport course.  Her primary focus of training and study is in the sub disciplinary area of sport sociology.  She also serves as Co-Director of the Socio-Psychology Laboratory, and serves as the faculty advisor for the Sport Studies Association (SSA).

Dr. Knapp’s research interests are in the area of gender and sport, and more specifically the ways in which ideal femininity and hegemonic masculinity are reinforced and challenged within the sporting domain. She is one of the early researchers in the area of women’s experiences in football and her current research continues to expand upon our knowledge of women in this sport.

Her teaching duties at the undergraduate level include coursework required for sport administration, physical education teacher education undergraduate majors, and the university’s core curriculum and include History of Sport in the United States (KIN 200), Diversity in American Sport (KIN 210), and Psychosocial Aspects of Sport & Physical Activity (KIN 345).  At the graduate level, Dr. Knapp teaches Methods of Interview Research (KIN 502), Social Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity (KIN 513), and Gender and Sport (KIN/WGSS 560) for Exercise Science and Sport Studies program students. 

Dr. Knapp has served her profession as Co-founder and President of the Women’s Intersport Network for Southern Illinois (WIN for Southern Illinois), and maintains membership in North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), North American Society for Sport History (NASSH), North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), and the Southern Sociological Society.  She has reviewed for multiple journals, and currently serves on the editorial board of the Women, Sport and Physical Activity Journal.