Staff profile

Menghan Xiong is a PhD student in the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Durham University, funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC)–Durham University Joint PhD Scholarship. She holds an MSc in Counselling Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where she earned the COSCA (Counselling & Psychotherapy in Scotland) Certificate in Counselling Skills, a professionally recognized qualification. Before this, she completed a Bachelor of Business Administration at the University of Macau, where she was awarded a full scholarship for Outstanding Student Athletes for four consecutive years. Menghan is also a certified National Level II basketball player in China, with more than a decade of competitive playing experience.

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8515-297X

Research

Menghan's PhD project examines how elite Chinese women’s basketball players negotiate femininity within the sport. Based on around 30 semi-structured interviews, this qualitative study explores how athletes manage the tensions between athleticism and femininity, the forms of femininity they embody, and the ways they resist or conform to dominant gender expectations. This project represents one of the first empirical investigations into the experiences of elite Chinese women athletes, contributing to a more inclusive understanding of gender in sport and broadening the sociological study of sport in non-Western contexts.

Research Interests

l  Gender inequality in sport

l  The embodiment of women athletes

l  Negotiation of femininity and gender performance among women athletes

Supervision

Professor Stacey Pope

Professor Brett Smith