Holly Thorpe

Holly Alysha Thorpe is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Waikato, specialising in sports sociology.

Academic career

Thorpe was a competitive snowboarder. Her inaugural professorial lecture described how new sports like snowboarding came to be included in the Olympic Games. Her research covers gender, youth, extreme and action sports and how sport can contribute to development. She has written five books and edited a further nine. Thorpe is a founding member of WHISPA, a High Performance Sport NZ working group on healthy women in sport.

Awards In 2009 Thorpe was awarded a scholarship by the Leverhulme Trust to visit the University of Brighton, where she wrote a book about snowboarding culture. and a Leverhulme Fellowship. Her project explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, and their strategies for maintaining connection, wellbeing and physical health during the pandemic.

Selected works