Åsa Bäckström

Åsa Bäckström serves as Senior Lecturer and Head of Subject in Sport Culture at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (GIH), affiliated with the Department of Movement, Culture and Society's Section for Sport Management. She teaches undergraduate courses on sport's societal role including 'Social Science Perspectives on Sport' and 'Sports, Ethics and Social Responsibility,' advanced qualitative research methods in the Master's Programme in Sport Science, and supervises doctoral candidates in graduate schools School, Sports, Screen and SMOVE.

Her research operates at the intersection of sports science, youth studies, and cultural theory with specialized expertise in gender dynamics and qualitative methodologies. Key investigations examine affective negotiations in youth sport settings, commercialization of childhood physical activity, and embodied learning in alternative sports like skateboarding. She employs cultural theoretical frameworks to analyze how socio-material practices shape identity formation in locker rooms, skate parks, and commercialized youth sport environments.

Recent publications reveal consistent focus on gendered power structures in sport spaces, market-driven transformations in child/youth physical activity, and sensory dimensions of movement literacy. Her work increasingly addresses transgender inclusion and challenges to cis/heteronormativity while maintaining methodological emphasis on ethnographic and phenomenological approaches to embodied experience.

Scientific Awards: No awards documented in source materials.

Bäckström leads the CIF-funded project 'Change in practice – teenagers' affective and socio-cultural negotiations in the locker room' and contributes to the VR-funded 'Movements and Transitions in Everyday School Life' at Malmö University. She supervises doctoral researchers in qualitative methods and previously edited 'Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research' (2013-2021), demonstrating sustained commitment to youth sport scholarship.

She actively participates in the interdisciplinary Research in Education & Movement Culture group, which explores movement, culture, and society through humanities and social science lenses. Her collaborative networks span national institutions including Malmö University and international youth sport research communities.