Megan Chawansky is Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Otterbein University. Her research on Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) is widely read. She stands out as an academic whose research is reflective, thought provoking and sensitive. Sarah Oxford (Victoria University) has actively followed Megan’s academic career and regularly cites her work. Below, Sarah interviews Megan on research, academia and life.
Sarah Oxford: What research projects are you working on?
Megan Chawansky: I’m working on two projects – One, I’m trying to look at the history of Sport for Development and Peace through interventions in 1940’s and 1950s that used sport with displaced people from Ukraine. It’s a personal project. My father was in a camp in Germany before he came to the US. He came [to the US] in 1950 when he was 10 years old. One day we were talking and he said ‘Oh, when I was in Germany we used to ski and play soccer’ and I’m like ‘Dad that’s what I do! [Laughter] You should have told me this a long time ago!’ And so, ever since then my parents have told more stories and I have become more interested in where I come from and how that shaped me. I’ve started to do family genealogy and to tell his story through sports. I realized from visiting the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute collection that there were pretty extensive sports competitions going on between people who were considered DPs, displaced people, in these camps and refugees either waiting to be either moved to the US, Canada, Australia or elsewhere. They essentially refused to go back to Ukraine and Soviet Union. I was just there [Harvard] this week and I’m really hoping to build this up a little bit more and figure out what current projects might be able to learn from more historical work. The current SDP movement can benefit from knowing more about what was there in the past. These projects were trying to teach life lessons in sports it seems and so that's what I’m really excited about because it has some personal ties as well.
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
SO: That sounds really interesting. Will you be able to visit any of the camps or do you draw from secondary data?
MC: I mean these camps pretty much disbanded in the 1950s once people were re-settled. I did go to Mittenwald this summer, which is where my dad spent much of his young life, five to six years. But, I couldn’t get to the camp. I’m not sure if it physically exists anymore. Or, how to actually access it. That’s a good question. I hope to at the very least draw parallels with people who are displaced or refugees that are involved with current sports activities that are going on.
What’s also really interesting is to look at the organization of the initiatives. It seemed at first self-directed but we found records of them needing approval for travel and contacting different agencies for funding. Some of the same issues that we see in our work! I’m now focusing on that and not as much on girls and women like in my previous work has been.
Megan’s mother, Carol Chawansky, and Megan in Mittenwald
The second project is not necessarily research but more community building. I do this sports film festival now. This is my third year organizing the International Sports Film Festival of Ohio (ISFFO).
Mainly it came from two parts. One, I found when I would go to different places and present on my research and talk about my research that I’d often get critiqued that I wasn't doing enough at home. Which I think is something we always have to kind of grapple with and think about. And then when I did move back to the US, I was really sad about potentially missing out on all the great global connections I had made and the access I had to different stories and what sport means to people, so I roped in a friend and former grad student colleague of mine to work on this. We try to show films with social issues foregrounded and to bring speakers.
It’s a typical film festival format, and modeled after some of Dr. Russell Field’s work with the Canadian Sports Film Festival. It’s pretty small but we’re hoping to get Otterbein University students more involved and to hit on themes that are of interest to Ohio, and central Ohio in particular, or any topical themes that resonate with our community. It’s kind of a labor of love and a lot of work. The first year we had pretty good international representation but this year I’d say we realized that Ohioans like to hear stories about themselves or have access to stories that are a little bit more, I think, as they see them relevant to their daily lives. I am hoping to always bring in some global perspectives into these programs.
SO: How do you choose your films?
MC: We don’t have an open call. At the moment we curate and try to figure out themes that resonate with our community. This year we’re showing Roll Red Roll, a documentary.
I don’t know how people are finding out, but we have gotten emails from people asking will you show our film? It’s kind of exciting but another layer to think about in the moment. I’m hoping that next year this is really more about Otterbein and to get our students more involved and to integrate it into our sport management program and to have it where it’s easier to manage. Right now it’s my side project and I don’t really need a side project. [Laughter]
SO: Where do you see the most exciting debates happening in SDP?
MC: I’m about to do a virtual guest lecture for Lyndsay Hayhurst on Thursday. One of the things I’ll be talking about is sexuality. I’ll draw from the article I wrote with Alison Carney a few years ago. It’s one that she’s assigned for her class about heteronormativity and SDP. I still think that's a theme that needs more interrogation and discussion. And, I don't know if there’s a clear path forward but I would like to see more critical questions around sexuality.
Another theme that I’m working on with Holly Thorpe, kind-of relating to me, is about women SDP workers, especially workers who travel to different places for either short term or longer-term commitments. I went to Cyprus for Peace Players. That was my first foray into the field. I encountered a number of different issues related to gender and sexuality. So, I’m really interested in women’s experiences in working in some challenging contexts. Not that they aren’t challenging for men but there can be different circumstances that women find themselves in, both locally and internationally.
So that’s kind of moved me a bit towards thinking about management issues in SDP.
Those are some of the big themes in my mind. I’m still always obsessed with how programs evaluate themselves and the pressure they feel to evaluate themselves, and how we have certain types of evaluations that take priority. I’m still working on some of that kind of stuff with Alison. We do a Community of Practice (COP) supported by Laureus with projects that are centered on girls and women. I get to keep tabs on how people and programs are articulating their agendas, missions and how they are trying to monitor and evaluate their successes in the field.
SO: You haven’t given up on it!
MC: No, this year I have a heavy teaching load and I'm at a more student-centered university. My research expectations are different than before. I need to be mindful that my time needs to be put elsewhere. I’m giving myself this year to settle in and learn sport finance. [Laughter]. That subject! It gets me worked up but that's for another conversation.
SO: The stuff on sexuality in SDP is so interesting. Going into Colombia, I was told for my safety I needed to paint my nails pink and wear mascara – really, for my safety? A lot of the players ‘came out’ to me but weren’t open in the community. I didn’t write much about that because I didn’t want it to filter back, but definitely big red flags there.
MC: Yes and I think Alison and I and a few other people who identify as LGBTQ what have you – various queer identities – have talked about trying to write something from our perspective about how we navigate sexuality because we have different strategies. Talking about players and athletes’ experiences on the ground is still a little bit [pause] we’re not sure how to proceed with that. But I mean about your earlier comment, I was told similar or comparable things in India, like to wear a wedding ring, to present myself this way. I don’t know if that's going to work because everyone thinks I’m a boy, that’s okay. [Laughter]. I have short hair, I am taller than most men there and I think that I was confusing to some people.
SO: I had really interesting conversations with my university's ethics committee, a lot of back and forth about how I would dress and act in Colombia. It raised questions about what stereotypes are being projected onto the research location and how I am supposed to maintain being me if I’m acting or dressing in different ways?
MC: Kind of spinning off the management of workers is the management of researchers and those similar risk assessment issues coming out for me. Right around the time I went to Delhi, it was around the time of the Delhi rape incident. Women were advised not to travel during that time. I worked with a colleague who became my protector and here I am the vulnerable white woman who needs protecting, but does anyone care about my Indian colleague? It was a lot of stuff to think about.
SO: What work does culture play in your thinking?
MC: This is a hard one. I have been trained in thinking about life and sport through a lens of culture or socio-cultural frameworks. Having some sort of understanding or appreciation for cultural diversity is essential to all the work that we should be doing in SDP. Taking that out of the equation is a bit of a problem.
SO: How has the way you understand the world shifted over time and what prompted these shifts?
MC: A really foundational shift for me was moving, living and working in the UK. In terms of how I understood the world, I think I had always intellectually understood the ideas of ‘othering’ but interacting with that on a more personal level was pretty revealing. Every time I spoke I was seen as the American. My students would say you dress like an American! I’d never had to think much about what an American dresses like. I knew of the stereotypes but I never thought I fit into them. They would assume I watched the Super Bowl or that I would go to McDonalds. They would tell me things like everyone in the US does this and I was like [hum noise] that's not my experience. Or people would say, oh you’re from the US. I’ve been to Florida! Or New York! And I’m like [hum noise] Ohio is not like those places, but that’s great. It's a lovely country.
I found myself interestingly becoming more patriotic, that's too strong of a word, but I felt like I had to become a bit of an ambassador for my country in a weird way. I had to explain debates around the death penalty and guns. We really need to get people out to see different things.
How has my thinking changed? I have an appreciation for how lucky I’ve been to see different parts of the world and to experience different things. I am able to appreciate people’s experiences and ways of viewing the world. I know there’s lots of ways we can get on with our lives and its okay if it’s not the exact way that I do it. People can do things their way! I had some of that growing up with my Dad’s parents, my grandparents who were old country Ukrainian. We’d go to Ukrainian churches and I was a Ukrainian folk dancer. Fancy footwork! I always had an appreciation for them. They couldn’t speak English very well and they dressed in funny clothes (in my child’s mind) and stuff like that.
I think experiencing it more first-hand. That was a real pivotal moment. When I spoke and was assumed to be Canadian and then they’d apologize when I corrected them. It’d go from there in various ways. Also the decision to come back and then figuring out what I wanted to contribute to my community and country. And not to be grandiose but you know what’s my role? It can’t just be that I got all these experiences and got to live in different places and got to travel. What’s the usefulness of that now? What am I leaving behind? What’s the point of it all?
I teach global sport, and I’m working to do some study abroad for our students, which we haven’t done before in sport management. Those are things that I feel like I can help the students use to understand their place in the world and what their role is to make the world a better place.
SO: What most excites you about your work?
MC: Last week my translator translated this one bit, something in the archive that was from a yearbook or scrapbook from a Ukrainian sports team. In the preface, it said something like – we’ve tried to use sport to promote Ukraine and values and so on, but it’s not for us to decide, it’s for future researchers to come back and evaluate and make that judgment call. And I was like wow. Really! That gave me the shivers! Even though these people are passed on now, there is an ongoing conversation. They've left their legacy and I’m picking it up and hopefully we’ll leave it for the next group of scholars to pick up or just a person of interest in this topic. So I’ve always been really excited when I’ve been able to hear from one or two people who are saying I’ve read your work and I think it’s cool and I’m going to take it this way. So again there’s maybe a team metaphor, or even leaving a legacy about something you care about, something someone else cares about, the feeling of connection through work. A lot of time our work can be pretty isolating. We sit by ourselves a lot and we are in our heads a lot, so those moments of connectivity through our work on the paper are exciting. A lot of us are doing connective work in the field as well, but that was really exciting for me.
SO: That is really cool. That thinking that someone’s going to come next, that it doesn’t stop there. That’s cool of them to do that.
MC: I loved it! That was on the last day and I was like Ahh! I love this! This will push me through. It’s hard work because I don’t speak or read Ukrainian. This is my first time working with a translator. She would read it; she knew what I wanted to get out of it more or less and she’d have to translate it to me. It wasn’t fast work. It’ll be a labor of love to work through this.
SO: That requires so much patience. What is the most important advice you could give to young scholars?
MC: Am I an old scholar now? Middle aged scholar? [Laughter]
SO: Interpret it as you want! [Laughter]
MC: I’m 10 years out of my PhD. I guess I would say some advice that I’ve been giving a lot of people, even people my age, is that no job is perfect. It doesn’t seem like a good place to start but I had two conversations last week where I had to start the conversation saying okay no job is perfect, and you have to find what works for you in each different position. You need to be mindful of the bigger context that you work in and how what you want to do fits into that or not. It's practical advice about managing expectations when it comes to a job. Don’t set yourself up to think your job is going to be the be all and end all for you. Find a way to keep some of your passions and interests going even if maybe you’re not producing those at the moment in terms of scholarly outputs and things like that. I was joking with the archivist that I emailed her two years ago about visiting the archive but then I didn’t really have time or money and so its been in my back pocket. I really wanted to do it well and right. I was willing to be patient with that but then in the meantime meet some expectations with my day job. It sounds crass but you get the picture. Those are two or three bits of advice I would say for young researchers at the more professional level. For masters and up, I always say to people who come to me asking if they should do a PhD that I don’t know because it's a big commitment. I don’t know if I would say just do it, it’s the best experience. It’s really hard! In the US it’s financially and emotionally taxing in different ways. You need to be clear that you want to do it for professional development or for personal reasons; and both of those can be quite different but it’s tough. It’s not for everyone and that’s okay. People with PhDs are not necessarily smarter than everyone else [laughter] you can maybe cultivate your passion or interests in other ways and that's okay too.
SO: What are you planting in your garden?
MC: We’re just in March here, so we’re still early. I did go to a gardening workshop at my library about growing seedlings indoors. I’ve never started seeds indoors. First I’m like oh my god, I need to get equipment but then the takeaway of the lesson was no you don’t. So I pulled it together and I got five packets of seeds – we have a seed library at my library. But here’s my problem: I’ve got clay soil. I need to do raised beds, which I can do but I have got to figure out some logistics. In terms of planting, I’ll keep it simple – cherry tomatoes, herbs and zinnia flowers. I want to see if I can grow some poppies because they are hard to grow in certain locations. Don’t they need shade?
SO: I haven’t’ grown them before.
MC: We had poppies where I did Ukrainian dancing, so it goes with my theme of learning my roots.
Dr. Megan Chawansky is currently an assistant professor of sport management. At Otterbein University, she teaches courses on global sports, sport marketing, sport facilities, sport psychology, and sport finance. Previously, she served as a lecturer and the Assistant Director of the Global Center for Sport Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky. She also worked at the University of Bath (UK) and the University of Brighton (UK), where she taught on the graduate program in sport for development.
Her research interests reside in the use of sport for social change. She has worked with a number of organizations in the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector, and her research and consultancy experiences in the area of SDP include work with partners and colleagues in South Africa and Cambodia (Skateistan), India (Naz Foundation), Zambia (Go Sisters), Kenya (Women Win event, held at Moving the Goalposts-Kilifi), Sri Lanka (Commonwealth Secretariat), and the Caribbean (multiple organizations). Megan grew up in northeast Ohio (Lorain and Avon Lake) and played college basketball at Northwestern University.