Primary Sports, Society, and Technology (SST) Faculty
Mary McDonald, Director of the Sports, Society, and Technology Program and Homer C. Rice Chair in Sports and Society
Mary McDonald's research and teaching focus on American culture and sports, including issues of inequality as related to gender, race, class, and sexuality. Her current research 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. She is also interested in exploring socially just and environmentally sustainable sports practices within cities. At Georgia Tech, McDonald teaches HTS 3022: Gender and Sports and HTS 3073: Sociology of Sports.
Johnny Smith, 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. Smith teaches HTS 2015: History of Sports in America and HTS 3803: Boxing, Race, and American Culture.
Faculty Teaching in SST
- Kirk Bowman, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
- Mindy Millard-Stafford, School of Applied Physiology
- Willie Pearson, Jr., School of History and Sociology
- Jud Ready, School of Materials Science and Engineering
- Bruce Siegal, School of History and Sociology
- Danny Woodbury, School of Economics
Affiliated Faculty and Staff
Joel Sokol, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Joel Sokol's primary research interest is sports analytics. He's worked with teams or leagues in all three of the major American sports, as well as with sports-related startups, and has had several sports analytics publications. Most notable of which is perhaps his LRMC method for NCAA basketball prediction, for which he appeared on ESPN and CNN.
John Stasko, School of Interactive Computing
John Stasko's research is in the area of data visualization, particularly sports data visualization. Previously, he co-chaired a workshop on Sports Data Visualization at the IEEE VIS Conference and co-taught a seminar on Sports Analytics here in the College of Computing in 2011 and 2012.
Matt Ventresca, School of History and Sociology
Matt Ventresca's research is situated across the sociology of sport, media studies, and science and technology studies. At Georgia Tech, he is involved in two projects: the COVID Sports Project, an online hub of digital resources and analysis exploring the intersections between sports and the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sound, Sport, and the Digital, a network of scholars/artists exploring the social and political dimensions of sports soundscapes.