Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences

We're a welcoming, collegiate, and vibrant community of world-leading academics, delivering a cutting-edge curriculum in the sport and exercise sciences.

Our research is designed to make a positive impact on people’s lives. All our research is led in a way to address inequalities, promote social justice, and ensure better health and wellbeing through sport, exercise and physical activity.

We seek to address physical inactivity and health inequalities in terms of female health, childhood obesity, disability, and sports participation. We fight to establish the Sustainable Development Goals as a new focus for global and national sport policies and work to shape UK Government policy on women football fans, addressing  inequalities.

We advise the UK Chief Medical Officers’ on physical activity and disability; design and promote more effective and inclusive physical activity referral systems, and target health inequalities. We challenge sedentary behaviour messages for being ableist, and create new messages that are inclusive.

We provide an evidence-base for strategies to advance athlete health for sports performance and wellbeing, engaging with professional and community sport, industry and global networks.

Our taught programmes are consistently ranked in the Top 10 best sport-related degrees in the country and our department has also been ranked in the Top 100 in the QS World Rankings for 2023 for sport-related subjects. Our students benefit from studying at a globally renowned University, including gaining key employment skills identified as important by potential employers.