Whether it's learning in a classroom, co-authoring a research article, doing a fieldwork placement with a professional team, or spending your lunch break running around one of our tracks, as part of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management, you'll be joining us in our commitment to health, wellbeing, human movement, and leisure.

As Canadians are faced with higher incidences of disease and other health problems linked to sedentary living, health care organizations and governments are realizing the social and economic benefits of investing in proactive preventative measures.

By learning to take better care of our bodies through higher education, research and physical activity, we have a better chance of preventing illness and disease and the need for medical intervention.

Learning is a two-way process: To teach is to learn, and to learn is to teach. Whether it is through writing an essay, doing research work in a lab, teaching a graduate seminar, or studying for a mid-term, our students, faculty, Research Affiliates and staff are committed to enhancing the field of physical health and human performance.

Joannie Halas

Dr. Joannie Halas directs the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Managements’s Aboriginal Youth Mentor programs, which are designed to explicitly/experientially address issues of access to quality and culturally relevant education and physical activity opportunities, and to take into consideration historic forms of injustice/inequity, particularly in relation to Aboriginal peoples and communities. Dr. Halas’s research program explicitly integrates her service, teaching and research into a purposeful study of how to enhance educational access for under-represented groups (Aboriginal and racialized minority youth) in physical education, recreation and kinesiology.

Jennifer Mactavish

Dr. Mactavish’s research agenda is closely aligned with human rights, as it focuses on disability issues and sport development – both of which are driven by social justice (among other conceptual bases). Examples include her research on Perspectives in Change, the Vulnerable Persons Act, and Paralympic classification.

LeeAnne Petherick

Dr. Petherick's research aims to help children and youth think critically about messages they receive about body shape and other health issues. Petherick investigates the diverse social, cultural and material conditions that influence individual experiences of physical activity, sport and health, and how these experiences are impacted by the emergence of new social health imperatives, particularly those that centre around body weight, shape and size. She is also dedicated to ensuring that the children's programming provided by the University of Manitoba is of the highest quality.

Petherick belongs to a number of research groups, namely: the Health, Leisure and Human Performance Research Institute (U of M); the Qualitative Research Group (U of M); and the International Critical Obesity Network.

Sara Teetzel

Dr. Sarah Teetzel is an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management. Her research examines equity, justice, and fairness in sport. Her projects include an analysis of the gendered nature of doping research and anti-doping education campaigns (funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency) and an examination of whether drug testing in sport is a justifiable violation of an athlete’s right to privacy and autonomy (funded by a Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics Research Fellowship). Teetzel has also written about fairness for transgendered athletes.