Matt Ventresca

Dr. Matt Ventresca is a critical sports studies researcher whose work is situated across the sociology of sport, media studies, and science and technology studies. His current work at Georgia Tech involves the launch of two projects: 1) the COVID Sports Project, an online hub of digital resources and analysis exploring the intersections between sports and the COVID-19 pandemic (coming soon!); and 2) Sound, Sport, and the Digital, an event series and network of scholars/artists exploring the social and political dimensions of sports soundscapes. Dr. Ventresca is also a Visiting Fellow at Australian National University (School of Regulation and Global Governance). Matt was the Sport, Society, and Technology postdoc in Georgia Tech's School of History and Sociology from 2016-18 before completing two research fellowships at the University of Calgary (2018-2022).

Dr. Ventresca has spent the past decade researching sociocultural inequities within sport’s “concussion crisis." This work has entailed examinations of: media/scientific discourses around Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE); conceptions of scientific uncertainty and the politics of ignorance; media narratives linking brain injury to racialized constructions of deviance and crime; athlete experiences of concussion recovery in elite and youth sports contexts; theoretical approaches to qualitative research on concussion; and racial bias within concussion science. Matt co-edited Sociocultural Examinations of Sports Concussions (with Dr. Mary McDonald, Georgia Tech) which represented the first interdisciplinary collection of social research on the topic. He is also co-author (with Dr. Kathryn Henne, Australian National University) of the forthcoming book Violent Impacts: How Power and Inequality Shape the Concussion Crisis (2025).

Matt has also collaborated with Dr. Samantha King (Queen's University) on research investigating the cultural politics of pain management strategies in professional sports, including the use of prescription painkillers by pro athletes and, most recently, debates around the legalization of cannabis-based treatments in elite sports.

Dr. Ventresca's work increasingly involves projects grounded in the digital humanities and digital scholarship. Through the COVID Sports Project and Sound, Sport, and the Digital, Matt is exploring research directions that harness digital technologies with a focus on sound studies and audio production techniques.