Sally Shaw (academic)

Sally A. Shaw is a British–New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in diversity, inclusion and gender issues in sports and sport management.

Academic career
Shaw grew up in Balerno, near Edinburgh, and attended St Leonard's School in St Andrews. She has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in sociology from the University of York, and a Master of Science from the University of Sheffield. Shaw initially worked in sports management at the English Sports Council, before returning to study at De Montfort University. Shaw completed a PhD titled The construction of gender relations in sport organisations in 2001, supervised by Trevor Slack and Dawn Penney. Shaw then moved to Canada to lecture at Brock University, before joining the faculty of the University of Waikato in New Zealand. She joined the University of Otago in 2005, rising to associate professor in 2018 and full professor in 2024.

Shaw is Research Fellow of the North American Society for Sport Management. She is on the editorial board of the journals Sport Management Review and Journal of Sport Management.

Shaw's research covers diversity, equity and inclusion in sport and sport management and governance. Shaw is gay, and conducted the first New Zealand national study of homophobia in sport, which found that despite there being many gay and lesbian people in sport, many of them were still uncomfortable coming out. She has studied the experience of LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people during the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. She comments publicly on gender and sexuality issues in sport.