Centre Director
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @DrMelLang
Melanie is a Reader/ Associate Professor in Child Protection in Sport in the Department of Social Sciences and is assistant director of CPSS. Her research work is focused on child maltreatment (emotional/psychological, physical and sexual abuse) in sport, safeguarding and child protection policy and politics, children’s rights and gender-based violence in sport.
Melanie has delivered training and continuing professional development workshops on a range of topics relating to safeguarding and child protection in sport to sport policymakers, coaches, athletes and charitable organisations in the UK, China, Japan, and Ghana. She was a member of the steering committee and the national expert for the UK on the European Commission-funded project Gender-Based Violence in Sport, is currently an expert member of the Pool of European Experts on Sexual Violence in Sport (part of the Council of Europe and European Union Pro Safe Sport+ project), the NSPCC Sport England Child Protection in Sport Unit Research Evidence and Advisory Group, and the UK Coaching Safeguarding Talented and Elite Children Expert Group.
As well as publishing numerous scientific articles, 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).