Dr Kev Harris

Career Overview

I’m an experienced academic in Sports Management and am passionate about understanding, evaluating and researching the areas of Sport Management particularly within the areas of sport for development. I’m a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and hold a PhD focusing on collaborative approaches to evaluation with practitioners in sport settings.

At present I embed this work in my role as Evaluation Leader of the consortium supporting Active Essex's Local Delivery Pilot. I’m also part of the National Evaluation and Learning Partner consortium for Sport England’s Local Delivery Pilots.

Teaching and supervision

MSc in Sports Management 

• Real World Issues in Sports Management
• Evaluation and Learning in sports management
• Sports Business Consultancy Project

I also support a range of PhD students within and outside of Hartpury.

Research interests

My main research interests lie within the areas of evidence, and realist collaborative approaches to evaluation with practitioners in sports management, sport for development and public health. I’ve published widely around this area and has recently published the first Evaluation book of its kind focused on evidence in sport and leisure with Routledge.

I’ve also published in Q methodology and its alliance with realist evaluation. I’m passionate about knowledge exchange disseminating academic knowledge into the real world.

Through the Hartpury Sports Business Hub, I currently lead the academic evaluation of Active Essex’s Local Delivery Pilot (LDP), as well as the Active Essex deep dive systems evaluation that was completed in January 2023. In addition, alongside Sheffield Hallam University, I support the National Evaluation and Learning Partnership (NELP) for Sport England’s LDP multimillion pound investment, and also the Qualitative Comparative Analysis evaluation of Sport England's place based working.

See also...