derek silva, ph.d.

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professor. writer. public scholar.

Co-author of the forthcoming book The End of College Football: On The Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press; Pre-order now!).

Associate professor in the Department of Sociology at King's University College, affiliated research professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, and, during the 2023-24 academic year, the Eakin Fellow in the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. 

Areas of interest include sociocultural studies of sport, critical sociology, labor, punishment, racism, and inequality. Peer-reviewed work in Critical Sociology, Punishment and Society, Crime, Media, Culture, Policing & Society, Sociology of Sport Journal, Sociological Forum, Race & Class, Educational Gerontology, and others. 

Active public writer and podcaster, and widely published in TIME Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Daily Beast, Sportico, Jacobin, and The Baffler. Co-founder, co-host, and producer of The End of Sport podcast, which can be found wherever you get your podcasts!

Member-at-Large for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) and on the editorial board of NASSS' flagship Sociology of Sport Journal

Currently working on three SSHRC-funded projects. The first is a study on the policing of recreation and sport during the pandemic, funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant. The second is entitled "How radicalization has become the dominant framework for understanding terrorism." This project is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant and traces the emergence of radicalization as the primary framework for understanding transitions toward political violence. The third, funded by a SSHRC Partnership Engage COVID-19 Initiative Grant looks at how participants in serious leisure activities make sense of the loss of sport during COVID-19 lockdown and how they perceive risk as they return to activity during and 'after' the pandemic.