Karen Hartman
Executive Director
Karen L. Hartman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Persuasion at Idaho State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from Louisiana State University and her research interests revolve largely around the role of sport in the United States and how language and public relations efforts frame athletes, institutions, and laws. She has published numerous research articles, including most recently in the International Journal of Sport Communication and the Journal of Global Sport Management. Hartman served as Chair of the National Communication Association’s Communication and Sport Division in 2018 and has been involved with IACS since 2006, holding positions such as Vice-Chair and Chair (2012-2014). She is also a member of the editorial board of Communication & Sport. A former Division-I athlete at Furman University, Hartman worked as a publicist in the entertainment industry before going into academia.
Evan Frederick
Board of Directors - Chair
Rotates to Past Chair in 2023
Evan Frederick is an Assistant Professor of Sport Administration at the University of Louisville. Prior to joining the University of Louisville in 2016, Frederick was a faculty member at the University of New Mexico and the University of Southern Indiana. He holds a Ph.D. in Sport Management, an M.S. in Sport Management, and a B.A. in Communication and Culture all from Indiana University. His primary research interest is the intersection of sport and social media. His secondary research interest is sport communication and media theory.
Angela N. Pratt
Board of Directors - Vice Chair
Rotates to Chair in 2023
Dr. Angela N. Pratt is an Assistant Professor in the Sports Studies Department at Bishop’s University and teaches in the Business and Society concentration. Her research interests are largely industry-oriented and span four major categories: Sport Administration, Strategic Communication, Gender and Sport Communication, and Qualitative Research Methods.
Travis Bell
Board of Directors - Secretary
Rotates off the Board in 2023
Travis R. Bell (Ph.D., University of South Florida) is a multimedia journalism instructor at the University of South Florida. His primary research focuses on sports media often at an intersection with race and gender. He has published in the International Journal of Sport Communication and Communication & Sport and is working on a book about the role of media construction of CTE as a public health issue through the NFL. Bell was a sports broadcast journalist from 2000-2012 at five local television stations and has produced five documentary films, including two connected to race and high school football. You can read more on his website www.travisrbell.com.
Guy Harrison
Board of Directors
Rotates off the Board in 2023
Guy Harrison (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He was previously in the Department of Communication at Youngstown State University for three years. Dr. Harrison also serves on the executive board of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS). His research interests include diversity and inclusion in sports media, and the business of sports broadcasting. His upcoming book, On the Sidelines: Gendered Neoliberalism and the American Female Sportscaster is due for release in 2021.
Beth Fielding-Lloyd
Board of Directors
Rotates off the Board in 2025
Bio forthcoming...
Xavier Ginesta
Board of Directors
Rotates off the Board in 2025
Xavier Ginesta is Senior Lecturer at the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia. He also collaborates with the Olympic Studies Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain. His main research interests are Sport Management, Communication and Politics and Sport Place Branding. His research has been published in several international journals, such as Communication & Sport, Soccer & Society or the American Behavioural Scientist. He has published the book untitled Les multinacionals de l’entreteniment. Futbol, diplomàcia, identitat i tecnologia [Entertainment Multinationals. Football, diplomacy, identity and technology] (Editorial UOC, 2020) and he is the co-editor of the volume Sport, Globalisation and Identity. New Perspectives on Regions and Nations (Routledge, 2020). He is a member of the TRACTE research group at UVic-UCC [Audiovisual Translation, Communication and Territory] and is member of the Sports Management Advisory Board at Widener University (Chester, PA).
Aaron Gallagher
Board of Directors - Graduate Student Rep.
Rotates off the Board in 2024
Aaron is a Ph.D student at Dublin City University and an upcoming Fulbright Student Scholar at the University of Maryland. His Ph.D investigates the relationship between sporting organisations, athletes and the media. He received his Bachelor’s in Journalism in 2017 and Master’s Degree in Social Media Communications in 2019. Aaron has worked for a number of years as a sports journalist, his work published in national publications across Ireland. Aaron was Editor-in-Chief of his university’s newspaper, for which he was named National Student Media Journalist of the Year. He took part in the Washington Ireland Programme in 2021 and recently completed a traineeship with the European Olympic Committee in Belgium. Having recently been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, Aaron will spend a semester at the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, as part of his Ph.D research project in 2023.
Kate Lavelle
Board of Directors - Treasurer
Kate Lavelle (Ph.D., Wayne State University) is an Associate Professor and the Director of Public Speaking Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She teaches courses in the Public Communication and Advocacy emphasis area in the Department of Communication Studies. Her primary research interests are in the relationship between rhetoric and sports, specifically in examining issues of race, gender, and nationality. Kate has been serving IACS since 2012.
Brody Ruihley
Board of Directors - Communications
Brody J. Ruihley is an Associate Professor of Sport Leadership and Management at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He holds a PhD in Sport Studies with a concentration in Sport Management from the University of Tennessee, an MS in Sport Administration from the University of Louisville, and a BA in Communication from the University of Kentucky. His primary research is in the area of fantasy sport and public relations in sport. Brody has been serving in this role since 2010.
Ann Pegoraro
Board of Directors - Past Chair
Rotates off the Board in 2023
Dr. Ann Pegoraro is the Director of the Institute for Sport Marketing (ISM) and holds an appointment as an Associate Professor in School of Sports Administration, all at Laurentian University. Ann received her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is an active researcher, who has presented at international conferences and published in refereed management journals in the areas of sport management, marketing, social media and communications. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of sport and new media, particularly social media with her work published in the International Journal of Sport Communication, Communication and Sport, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Sport Management, Online Information Review, and the Journal of Sponsorship.