Faculty in the Sports, Society, and Technology (SST) Program

Primary Sports, Society, and Technology (SST) Faculty

Mary McDonald, Ph.D.

Program Director, Georgia Tech Sports Society and Technology

Homer C. Rice Chair in Sports and Society

Both my research and teaching focus on American culture and sports including issues of inequality as related to gender, race, class and sexuality. My current research critically explores the relationships between gender, race and class as related to claims about wellbeing and health benefits within a variety of sporting and health contexts. I am also increasingly interested in exploring socially just and environmentally sustainable sport practices within cities. At Georgia Tech I teach HTS 3022 “Gender and Sports” as well as HTS 3073 “Sociology of Sports.” 

Johnny Smith, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Johnny Smith specializes in modern American history and the history of American sports. His newest book, Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X (written with Randy Roberts), examines the pivotal relationship between the famous boxer and the Muslim minister. His first book, The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball  explores the emergence of college basketball as a national pastime and the political conflicts in college athletics during the 1960s and 1970s. Professor Smith teaches "History of Sports in America" and "Boxing, Race, and American Culture."

 

Faculty Teaching in SST

Affiliated Faculty and Staff

Joel Sokol, Ph.D.

School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

One of my primary research interests is sports analytics.  I've worked with teams or leagues in all three of the major American sports, as well as with sports-related startups, and I have several sports analytics publications, including my LRMC method for NCAA basketball prediction (for which I've appeared on ESPN and CNN).

John Stasko

School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

My research is in the area of data visualization, and one of the areas that interests me is sports data visualization.  Last fall I co-chaired a workshop on Sports Data Visualization at the IEEE VIS Conference.  I also co-taught a seminar on Sports Analytics here in College of Computing for two years in 2011 and 2012.