Dr Aarti Ratna

Associate Professor

Department: Social Sciences

Key Publications

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Introductory essay: Race, gender and queering/querying sport and movement cultures, Ratna, A., Joseph, J., Kim, K. 8 Aug 2025, In: Women's Studies International Forum
A Nation of Family and Friends?: Sport and the Leisure Cultures of British Asian Girls and Women, Ratna, A. 12 Apr 2024
The theatrics of hate: Using art-based methods to understand hate crime and football fandom, Ratna, A., Doidge, M., Chowdhury, M., Skillen, F. 12 Sep 2025, In: Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies
Women Footballers in the UK: Feminism, Misogynoir and Hate Crimes, Caudwell, J., Healy, J., Ratna, A. 13 Nov 2023, Hate Crime in Football, Bristol, Bristol University Press
Hierarchical Assemblages of Citizenship and Belonging: The Pedestrian Speech Acts of British Gujarati Indian Walkers, Ratna, A. 1 Feb 2020, In: Sociology
Leisure Cultures and G/local Challenges to Nationalist Populist Politics, Ratna, A., Thangaraj, S., Rand, E., Burdsey, D. 2018, In: Leisure Studies
Not just merely different: Travelling theories, post-feminism, and the racialized politics of women of color’, Ratna, A. 2018, In: Sociology of Sport Journal
Leisure, Racism, and National Populist Politics, Ratna, A., Rand, E., Burdsey, D., Thangaraj, S. 8 Jul 2021
Walking for leisure: the translocal lives of first generation Gujarati Indian men and women, Ratna, A. 3 Sep 2017, In: Leisure Studies

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Publication Peer-review: Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies (Journal) 2025
Editorial work: Women's Studies International Forum (Journal) 2025
Invited talk: My Mum and Dad;s walking group: A story about gender, race and class. 2025
Invited talk: Palestine Solidarity 2024
Editorial work: Routledge (Publisher) 2024
Oral presentation: Practising Black Feminist Fugitivity 2023
Invited talk: Gaza and Protest in Football 2023

Aarti has a successful track record of winning a range of public, academic and voluntary sector funding grants, amassing more than half a million pounds in total. Funders have included the British Academy, the Arts Humanities Research Council, the National Lottery Community Foundation, Sports England, the UK Home Office, and West Yorkshire Police. Some of this project work has been done as a research consultant with the charity organisation Community Lions Foundation.

Her external service, more broadly, has included roles as Chair of the journal Leisure Studies, as an Associate Editor (Sociology) for Communications in Humanities and Social Sciences, and as an editorial board member of the Sociology of Sport Journal. She has also served as the Co-Chair of the British Sociological Association's Sport Study group. She is currently a Co-Editor for the Palgrave Book series New Femininities in Physical, Digital and Sporting Cultures.

She has overseen four students to successful PhD completion and examined a number of doctoral studies including through public defence.

As a passionate scholar and teacher, Aarti has also served the various institutions in which she has worked as programme leader, teaching and learning department lead, Co-Chair of a University Race and Equality group, ethics committee member and, also, she founded and led her own research centre, the Leisure Studies Research Group. Across these leadership positions, Aarti has remained committed to the politics of equity and widening participation.

Aarti's monograph with US publishers Rutgers University Press, entitled "A Nation of Family and Friends? Sport and the Leisure Cultures of British Asian Girls and Women", was published in April 2024. See here