Niya St. Amant began her academic life in the field of criminology, where she pursued an interest in sports through a focus on sports criminology research. This interest led Niya to the , where she is now a 2nd year PhD student. She describes coming to a new discipline for her PhD as a bit of a culture shock. Suddenly working with scientific terms she wasn鈥檛 familiar with, brushing arms with critical health studies, 鈥渋t was definitely like jumping feet first into cold water.鈥 That feeling didn鈥檛 last much longer than her first semester, however, as once she got past navigating a 鈥渘ew program, new discipline, new people,鈥 she settled in with her lab mates. 鈥淭hey make me feel great every time we hop on zoom,鈥 Niya says about them.
Niya鈥檚 research builds on the work of her MA, which looked at how minor league hockey coaches responded to the implementation of , the youth concussion policy in Ontario. Now, she鈥檚 taking that work a step further, looking at 鈥渉ow these concussion policies are very universalizing and how they assume a one-size-fits-all mentality鈥 when it comes to concussion prevention and management. Niya approaches kinesiology from a sociocultural lens and uses qualitative research methods, tending towards interviews and ethnography to gather her data. She explained that to do kinesiology in this way means to 鈥渓ook at how sport and exercise impacts people.鈥
The School of Kinesiology and Health Studies has students specializing in different aspects of sport and physical activity from the social to the psychological to the biomechanical (and more). Niya enjoys the opportunities this gives herself and other students to learn from one another. 鈥淲hen we do our grad seminars, you get to hear firsthand what your peers are doing. There are people who are studying the brain and sport from a very quantitative perspective and while it doesn鈥檛 necessarily align with what I鈥檓 doing, it鈥檚 interesting to hear that perspective and the research that鈥檚 going on.鈥
Niya is a multi-sport athlete and played just about every sport available to her in high school. Her current activities of choice are ultimate frisbee and climbing at the . Niya also has a deep passion for writing, which she channels into her PhD work and as a writing TA for her faculty. While her PhD lets her flex her writing muscles, her writing TA position has shown her the joys of helping others develop their writing skills, too.
After completing her PhD project, Niya is interested in becoming a professor, but also in sharing her research outside of the academy. She鈥檚 drawn towards the idea of writing a book that would be accessible to a general audience or working on government policy as it applies to sports and exercise. Wherever her research takes her, Niya will keep her keen sociocultural analysis and her qualitative approach to sports research close at hand.