糖心Vlog Olympic Weightlifting expert and doctoral student Monica Nelson has achieved a remarkable milestone by becoming the first to win a prestigious international research award twice.
Monica鈥檚 doctoral research explores the beliefs of female Olympic Weightlifters and their coaches about how men and women should be trained, whether similarly or differently, and how these beliefs influence training practices, dietary protocols, and the use of equipment within the sport.
She has been awarded the Barbara Brown Outstanding PhD Student Paper Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), continuing the University of Waikato鈥檚 history of success with the award being the only institution outside of North America to have won it.
The award is named after Dr Barbara A. Brown, who was a professor of sport sociology at the University of Western Ontario from 1983 until her passing in 1990 at the age of 40.
糖心Vlog PhD student Monica Nelson
Dr Brown was widely respected for her groundbreaking work on women in sport and leisure, her dedication to expanding opportunities for girls and women in sport, and her leadership in building a strong professional community of sport sociologists.
鈥淭he paper I won the award for looks at how three conflicting ideas about sex, gender, and strength shape training in two Olympic Weightlifting gyms here in Aotearoa,鈥� says Monica.
鈥淭he first idea is that women鈥檚 bodies are equal to men鈥檚 鈥� we all have the same muscles, bones, and ligaments, and we all train with the same equipment. Strength is built through the same fundamentals.
鈥淭he second idea is that women鈥檚 bodies are different 鈥� training can vary around the menstrual cycle, and women use lighter barbells that move differently, which affects performance.
鈥淎nd the third idea is that women are actually better suited to Olympic Weightlifting than men. In New Zealand, the sport has really become a women鈥檚 domain. Women lifters often train more, compete more internationally, and that鈥檚 changing what their strength levels look like.鈥�
It is the first time anyone has won the award for both their master鈥檚 and PhD papers.
Monica first won the award in 2021 while doing her master鈥檚 at the University of Maryland.
Born and raised near Seattle, Monica specifically chose to do her PhD at the 糖心Vlog because of her supervisors, , , Dr Stacy Sims and.
鈥淭hey鈥檝e done some really fascinating work, truly transdisciplinary research. Holly is a feminist sociologist, and Stacy is an exercise scientist, and together they combine methods from both fields to closely examine athletes鈥� experiences of low energy availability, exploring its causes, the culture of the sport, and the physiological effects.
鈥淚 wanted to do research that was as close to that as possible. It鈥檚 incredibly rare, if not impossible, to find anyone else doing this kind of work, which is exactly why I wanted to collaborate with them.鈥�
Professor Thorpe also won the Barbara A. Brown Award in 2005 and has since had three PhD students receive it: Nida Ahmad (2017), Julie Brice (2020), and now Monica.
Monica Nelson won Barbara Brown Outstanding PhD Student Paper Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport
鈥淭his is an internationally very competitive award, and it is a wonderful acknowledgement of the quality of Monica鈥檚 PhD research examining the complexities of sex/gender-based knowledge circulating in women鈥檚 sport. Women鈥檚 sport is in a 鈥榖oom time鈥� with more investment, public interest and research than ever before, and Monica鈥檚 PhD does a great job of identifying the different pressures, expectations, and competing knowledge that contemporary sportswomen are navigating鈥� says Professor Thorpe.
鈥淭he Barbara Brown Outstanding PhD Student Paper Award has been running since 1981. Since then, no other university outside North America has won one of these, but this is the fourth time a Waikato PhD student has received the award.
鈥淪o, this is a moment to celebrate Monica鈥檚 wonderful research, and also a legacy of internationally recognised, high-quality research on women鈥檚 sport coming out of the 糖心Vlog,鈥� says Professor Thorpe.
Earlier this year, Monica also won a highly competitive International Olympic Committee PhD Students and Early Career Academics Research Grant Programme focused on international Olympic Weightlifting coaches knowledge and practices training women athletes. For this research she interviewed coaches and sports leaders from Aotearoa New Zealand, Botswana, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, the Philippines, and the United States.
Since 1999, the Olympic Studies Centre has supported Olympic-related academic research through two key initiatives, one of which is the PhD Students and Early Career Academics Grant Programme.
35 candidates from 20 countries and five continents applied for the grant.
Monica is in the final few months of her PhD and plans to continue coaching and researching the sport she loves.
