Dr. Carly Adams (Kinesiology) is a professor and historian who researches a variety of topics, including the history of women's sport. Her work has led her to creating books aimed at a non-academic audience and it is through these works where she connects the University with the broader community. She also works very closely with her students, many of which have assisted her on research projects.

Adams joined the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education in July 2007. Adams' research interests include 20th century Canadian sport, gender, regional and local history, oral history, and women's sport goverance. She is particularly drawn to research methods that allow her to talk to people about their sport and leisure experiences of the past and ask them how they make sense of and remember their experiences within the context of their lives and the world around them.

Adams' current research projects explore Lethbridge's Sporting Heritage from 1860-present (with Dr. Robert Kossuth) and the history of women's hockey in Alberta during the 1920s and 1930s.

Most recently, Adams has received funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Sport Participation Research Initiative to explore issues of community revistalization and rural survival in Southern Alberta through a case study of the Warner Hockey School in Warner, Alta. This project will look at the social determinants that led to the establishment of the school, its purposes, both imagined and actual, and the underlying role that high performance sport might play in rural community survival.

"I have always loved history and learning about the past," says Adams. "During my undergraduate degree in human kinetics and sport management at the University of Windsor in Ontario, several influential professors piqued my interest in social history, oral history and the relevance of sport, leisure and recreation to our understanding of the past. However, I was also surprised by how few sport historians wrote about and researched gender and more specifically women's sport/recreation experiences."

"As soon as I completed my first oral history interview, I knew how important memory and voice were going to be to how I wanted to "do" history."