Centre Director
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @DrMelLang
Melanie is Professor of Safeguarding and Children’s Rights in Sport in the Department of History, Geography and Social Sciences and is Director of CPSS. Her research focuses on child maltreatment (emotional/psychological, physical and sexual abuse) in sport, safeguarding and child protection policy and practice, children’s rights, especially their right to be heard (‘voice’), and gender-based violence in sport.
Melanie has delivered training and continuing professional development workshops on a range of topics relating to safeguarding and children’s participation rights in sport to policymakers, coaches, athletes, and charitable organisations in the UK, China, and Canada. She isan expert member of the Pool of European Experts in Safe Sport (part of the Council of Europe) and contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s Designated Safeguarding Officer in Sport certificate and training on ethical youth elite sport development for the Swiss Olympic Committee. Her current funded projects include designing a strategy to safeguard children in basketball in Kosovo, Estonia, and Bulgaria, and supporting the evaluation of the Active Partnership-led Sport Welfare Office Network.
Melanie is editor of the books The Routledge Handbook of Athlete Welfare (Routledge, 2020), Safeguarding, Child Protection and Abuse in Sport: International Perspectives in Research, Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2015) and Bullying and the Abuse of Power (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010).