BSc (Hons) Football Studies
Follow your football dreams with this industry-leading degree. Working with our Southampton FC partners, gain the skills to join our graduates working for Premier League clubs, FIFA and the FA.
Senior Research Fellow
Faculty of Sport, Health and Social Sciences
Dr Mark Turner is a Senior Research Fellow within the Southampton School of Sport, and a member of the Faculty of Sport, Health, and Social Science’s Research Advisory Group. He is co-lead and editor of the Faculty’s ‘Meet the Researcher’ podcast series.
Mark joined Solent University in 2011, having spent two years in the Department of Sport and Physical Activity at Edgehill University. He was awarded his undergraduate degree from Lancaster University and his postgraduate degree from the University of Brighton. Mark is also a research fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Mark is a leading international scholar examining the management policies of fans in football stadiums in England and Wales over the past 30-years. His PhD, awarded without corrections, is the most comprehensive study undertaken into the football supporter social movement; ‘Safe Standing’. He is a member of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority’s Academic Advisory Board and has been consulted as part of the UK Government’s review into the football stadia all-seating legislation. He has recently submitted written evidence for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s Select Committee on ‘Safety at Sporting Events’.
Mark is currently writing a monograph which documents the 30-year social history of football fan activism in the UK and working on several projects which examine the political, economic, and cultural changes that English football has undergone over the past three decades.
A co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Leisure and Recreation Study Group, and member of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the Football Collective, Mark continues to work with a number of organisations including the Football Supporters Association and Football Supporters Europe. He has written a number of pieces for local, national, and international media outlets to discuss issues relating to football supporters’ rights’, and their movements for greater transparency, justice, governance, and sustainability in football.Â
Mark has provided an analysis of contemporary debates on the social and political economy of football including, Safe Standing; The European Super League; Football Fan Social Movements; and The Sociology of Football Goal Celebrations, for a wide range of media sources, notably: The Conversation; When Saturday Comes; Al Jazeera; Deutsche Welle; The Athletic; Caviar Magazine. He has also submitted evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry into the Safety at Sporting events, and Safe Standing.
Follow your football dreams with this industry-leading degree. Working with our Southampton FC partners, gain the skills to join our graduates working for Premier League clubs, FIFA and the FA.
Develop your passion for sport, and progress to a successful career leading and managing sporting events and organisations on this CIMPSA accredited course.