VU researcher awarded fellowship to uncover visual legacy of sport

Associate Professor Matthew Klugman is the first Victoria University (VU) researcher to receive a prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship for a project that will explore Australia’s visual legacy of sport.

The $1 million Fellowship will be used for a four-year study of the impact and legacies of Australian sporting iconography, uncovering the roles that sport plays in shaping national pride, passions, concerns, and movements for social change.

“Pictures of lifesavers, cricketers, footballers and so many others have frequently been used to represent Australia to itself and the world, while other sporting images have sparked national debates around racism and sexism,” Associate Professor Klugman said.

The project will lead to a major exhibition, and will develop innovative digital education resources to assist the teaching of history to primary and secondary school students throughout Australia.

“I'm thrilled and a bit shell-shocked, and incredibly grateful to all those who have so generously supported me,” he said.

I can't wait to be working with VU’s Institute for Health & Research, the Moondani Balluk Indigenous Unit, and the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network (CIDRN) on this project.

Associate Professor Klugman joins 99 other Future Fellows across Australia to share in more than $97 million in grants under the 2023 scheme.

Researcher’s interests are multidisciplinary

Associate Professor Klugman’s research spans several fields, including the intersecting histories of sports, emotions, race, gender, the complexities and effects of sporting passions, and the cultures of ‘whiteness’ which so often shape modern sport.

He is co-author of the 2013 award-winning book, Black and Proud, which explored racism toward Indigenous AFL players through the iconic image of Nicky Winmar lifting his jumper and pointing with pride to his skin colour.  

The book (with Gary Osmond) won a 2015 NSW Premier's Literary Award, the 2015 Australian Society for Sports History Book Award, and was named one of the Times Higher Education Books of 2015. 

He is a previous recipient of an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher (DECRA) Fellowship, awarded in 2012.