Melanie is a Senior Lecturer in Child Protection in Sport. She works closely with national sports and coaching organisations to provide research, advice and consultancy on safeguarding, child protection, athlete welfare and gender-based violence-prevention strategies.

She is the UK country lead and a member of the steering committee for the Erasmus+ funded project entitled ‘Child Abuse in Sport: European Statistics (CASES) - the first project to attempt to estimate the prevalence of child abuse and exploitation in sport across six EU countries. She also sat on the strategic core team and served as the national expert for the UK on the European Commission-funded project Gender-Based Violence in Sport.

Melanie is an expert member of the Pool of European Experts on Sexual Violence in Sport (part of the Council of Europe and European Union Pro Safe Sport+ project), and a member of the NSPCC Sport England Child Protection in Sport Unit Research Evidence and Advisory Group and the UK Coaching Safeguarding Talented and Elite Children Expert Group.

She has also delivered training and continuing professional development workshops to sport policymakers, coaches, athletes and charitable organisations from the UK, China, Japan and Ghana. Her work has been supported by the European Commission Education, Audio-visual and Culture Executive Agency, the Sport England/ NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit, the Japanese government, and the NWG Network.

Melanie sits on the editorial board of the Irish Journal of Sociology, and is editor of the books ‘The Routledge Handbook of Athlete Welfare’ (Routledge, due 2020);‘Safeguarding, Child Protection and Abuse in Sport: International Perspectives in Research, Policy and Practice’ (Routledge, 2015); and ‘Bullying and the Abuse of Power’ (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010). She is also assistant director of the Centre for Safeguarding and Child Protection in Sport at Edge Hill University. 

Child protection and abuse in sport

Safeguarding in sport

Athlete welfare

Child welfare and well-being in sport 

Interpersonal violence in sport

Gender-based violence in sport

Sexual harassment in sport

Children's rights in sport

Youth sports

Sport policy implementation and evaluation

Qualitative research methods

Melanie introduced some of the first teaching modules on athlete welfare, child protection and children's rights in sport nationwide in her current and prevous institutions. She currently teaches modules on a range of sociology and sociology of sport themes and is a supervisor to MRes and PhD students working in the area of safeguarding and child protection in sport and physical activity.