Thesis Title: Female Football Coaches: Revealing, Recording and Representing an Intangible Cultural Heritage
Supervisors: Dr Marie Molloy and Dr Samantha Oldfield
This research explores the experiences of women involved in football coaching in the UK prior to the year 2000, with a particular focus on how memory and cultural knowledge are transmitted and preserved outside of official records. While oral history is central to the project, it also draws on a range of methodologies, including archival research, to examine the ways women’s contributions have been recorded, remembered, or overlooked. In addition to football, the research incorporates insights from women who coached in other sports, enabling a broader understanding of gendered experiences across sporting contexts. While much existing scholarship has focused on the experiences of women football players, comparatively little attention has been given to women coaches. This project seeks to redress that imbalance by foregrounding coaching as a vital, yet often invisible, site of cultural knowledge and influence. Framed through the lens of intangible cultural heritage, this research challenges dominant narratives in sport history and contributes to wider discussions in gender studies, heritage studies, and the sociology of sport.