Experts Guide - Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games

This year sees the Commonwealth Games hosted in Birmingham. The University of Birmingham has a wealth of expertise that journalists can tap into on a range of subjects related to the 2022 Games.

The guide below lists some of our academics available to provide expert comment. If you are interested in interviewing, or obtaining a quote from, any of the experts below, please contact our press office team on: pressoffice@contacts.bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)7789 921165.

Subject	Expert	Expertise
Team psychology - empowering through coaching	Professor Joan Duda Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences @JoanDuda	Professor Duda is a sport psychology consultant with expertise in motivation, impact of coach behaviours on athletes, mental skills training and mental toughness. Internationally known for work with athletes, coaches, instructors and those involved in the performing arts from grassroots and recreational through elite levels.
Perceptions of success	Professor Sarah Beck Reader in Cognitive Development School of Psychology @sarahruthbeck	Professor Beck is an expert in 'what might have been', disappointment and regret - for example, why silver medal winners can be less happy than bronze winners.
Coaching success	Dr Alex Consterdine Teaching Fellow in Sports Pedagogy School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences @aconsterdine1	Dr Consterdine is a lecturer in sports pedagogy. Her research interests concern the sociology of sport, focusing on power, culture and the coach-athlete relationship. Her latest work explores the training, education, and professional development of community sports coaches, related to imagery ability, imagery use, and responses to stress.
Coaching success	Dr Sarah Williams Lecturer in Sport Psychology and Coaching Science School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences	Dr Williams is a sport and performance psychologist with an interest in using techniques to regulate stress and performance and coping under pressure. She is internationally known for her work in mental imagery to respond to stress and enhance performance and wellbeing. She has published over 40 papers.
Doping prevention/sporting ethics	Professor Maria Kavussanu Professor in Sport & Exercise Psychology School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences @kavussanu	Professor Kavussanu’s main research interest is fair play in sport. Some of the questions she seeks to answer are: What leads some athletes to cheat and act aggressively toward other players? What are the consequences of intrateam antisocial behaviour for the recipient? Which psychosocial factors are associated with doping in sport? Can psychological intervention reduce doping?
Exercise Psychology	Dr Neil Dallaway Exercise Physiologist and Honorary Researcher School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences	Dr Dallaway’s expertise is in the brain’s regulation of endurance performance and mental fatigue - how this affects physical and mental performance and related strategies to improve performance.
High Performance: Group sport	Dr Barry Drust Director of Graduate School of Sport & Professional Practice @BARRYD22	Dr Drust is an expert in training planning and monitoring, evaluating the effectiveness of preparation strategies for elite players, attempts to develop a detailed understanding of the demands of intermittent exercise and identifying the importance of movement pattern as a determinant of the exercise response.
Nutrition and performance	Dr Gareth Wallis Associate Professor in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences @gareth_wallis	Dr Wallis is a Sport Scientist with major interests in Nutrition. His research aims to find ways to use nutrition to optimise the performance and health of athletes.
Sports and youth mental health	Dr Mary Quinton Assistant Professor in Sport and Exercise Psychology School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences @Mary_q6	Dr Quinton is interested in how positive youth development approaches in sport and community settings improve emotional regulation, social connectedness, and mental well-being in young people.
Motivational support	Matt Cole Teaching Fellow – Department of History College of Arts & Law @DrMRCole	Brought together a group of students to draw up biographical profiles of past Team England representatives as motivational material for their current athletes. A similar project worked well for Team GB preparing for the Tokyo Olympics.
Extreme climates and physical performance	Dr Rebekah Lucas Lecturer in Physical Activity and Health School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences	Dr Rebekah Lucas is an integrative physiologist who is interested in how exercise and environmental medicine translates to clinical medicine and public health. Her research examines human tolerance and adaptation to physical and environmental stressors, with a particular focus on thermal vascular physiology.
Physiotherapy	Judith Coe Teaching Fellow School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences	Judith will be working for Team England as a Medical HQ Physiotherapist.
Concussion	Mr Antonio Belli MD FRCS, FRCS (SN) Professor of Trauma Neurosurgery Institute of Inflammation and Ageing	An expert in acute brain injury, Prof Belli’s research interests include the acute and long-term effects on individuals of traumatic brain injury (TBI) – particularly among sportspeople.
Concussion	Valentina di Pietro Institute of Inflammation and Ageing @valentinaTBI	Dr Di Pietro, a molecular neuroscientist, is an expert in traumatic brain injury and leading research on markers in biofluids to diagnose sport-related concussion.
Politics of sport and sport policy, Olympic legacy	Dr Shushu Chen Lecturer in Sport Policy and Management School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences	Dr Chen is a Lecturer in Sport Policy and Management. Her principal research interests include sport policy evaluation, and major events legacies studies (particularly in the areas of Olympic legacy evaluation). Her recent research projects examine the sport participation legacies of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and the Birmingham 2022 Games’ legacies.
Security / Counter-terrorism / drones	Professor Dr David Dunn Professor in International Politics School of Government and Society @HastingsDunn	Dr Dunn is an expert on security and counterterrorism with a particular research interest in the use of drones.
Sustainability	Professor David Hannah Director, Birmingham Institute of Sustainability & Climate Action (BISCA) School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences	The University of Birmingham is leading and co-creating research to address the climate crisis and promote sustainability. Professor Hannah leads BISCA – which delivers world-leading, research on sustainability and fosters climate action, leading to better livelihoods and a more sustainable environment. He is UNESCO Chair in Water Sciences and on Reuters list of top 1000 most influential climate scientist.
Sustainability	Professor Andrew Dove School of Chemistry @Dove_Group	Professor Dove is part of the Birmingham Plastics Network, an interdisciplinary team of academics working together to shape the sustainable future of plastics. As the most sustainable Commonwealth Games yet, Birmingham 2022 provides an opportunity to learn valuable sustainability lessons.
Commonwealth and colonialism	Manu Seghal Lecturer in South Asian History College of Arts & Law Mo Moulton Senior Lecturer in the History of Race and Empire College of Arts & Law @hammock_tussock	The University of Birmingham has always been a global university. Manu Seghal and Mo Moulton are historians who explored the entangled histories of education and empire that our institution exemplifies.
Commonwealth culture	Professor Ewan Fernie MA, PhD Chair of Shakespeare Studies and Fellow Shakespeare Institute	Professor Fernie leads the Everything to Everybody project which features in a major exhibition opening on 22 July at the Library of Birmingham as part of the official Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme. The project revives, interrogates and seeks to update George Dawson’s 19th-century mission of establishing a ‘cultural commonwealth’ in Birmingham by building an extraordinarily rich, multicultural Shakespeare library for all citizens of the city.
History of Sport	Vanessa Heggie Associate Professor in the History of Medicine & Science Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation University of Birmingham	Dr Heggie is a historian of modern science and medicine, with a particular interest in the history of sports medicine, health and exercise.

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