Melanie has a PhD in safeguarding in sport and is Assistant Director of the Centre for Child Protection and Safeguarding in Sport and Reader (Associate Professor) in Child Protection in Sport at Edge Hill University, UK. Her research and teaching focus on safeguarding and abuse prevention in sport, athlete welfare, gender-based violence, and children’s rights in sport. Melanie’s research has been funded by the European Commission and the International Olympic Committee (Advanced Research Grant Programme), and she is a member of the Pool of European Experts on Sexual Violence in Sport, and the Research Chair in Security and Integrity in Sport at Laval University, Quebec, Canada. As well as publishing scientific articles, Melanie is editor of three books: ‘The Routledge Handbook of Athlete Welfare’ (Routledge, 2021), ‘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). She appears regularly in the national and international media as an expert speaker on safeguarding, child protection, and violence prevention in sport.
