The Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 AIESEP Early Career Scholar Award. This prestigious award recognises exceptional early career scholars who have demonstrated outstanding contributions to research, teaching, and service in the fields of physical education, physical activity, and sport.
2025 Award Winners
We are delighted to celebrate the achievements of the following five early career scholars:
- Marina Castro García, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (Norway)
- Carmen Barquero-Ruiz, University of Limerick (Ireland)
- Sophie Engelhardt, University of Koblenz (Germany)
- Donal Howley, Towson University (USA)
- Alba Rodrigues, George Mason University (USA)
Awards Presentation
The awards will be presented during the AIESEP 2025 International Conference, to be held in St Petersburg, Florida May 18th-22nd 2025. The winners will share insights from their work in a dedicated session celebrating their contributions to the community.
Please join us in congratulating these outstanding scholars on their well-deserved recognition!
Get to Know the Award Winners!
Dr Marina Castro García is a researcher at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NIH, Norway), where she collaborates with Dr. Mats Hordvik on the PhysEd Academy Project, an initiative partnered with AIESEP. Originally from Barcelona, Marina’s experiences in masculinised sports environments and her commitment to driving change have shaped her career.
Before joining NIH, Marina worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick (Ireland) with Dr. Antonio Calderón and as a predoctoral fellow at Universidade da Coruña (Spain), where she earned her PhD in Physical Education and Sport Sciences, supervised by Dr. Cristina López Villar. Motivated by a desire to not only do research but also contribute to social transformation, Marina’s doctoral project aimed to offer her “small grain of sand” towards building a better world. This included co-developing and enacting deportigualízate, a critical intersectional feminist curriculum designed to address inequities in sports and physical education.
As part of her academic training, Marina completed research visits to the University of Strathclyde (UK), Universidad Austral de Chile, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, working under the supervision of Prof. David Kirk and Dr. Dillon Landi, Dr. Sebastián Peña, and Dr. Rodrigo Gamboa, respectively. She is deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from exceptional scholars and colleagues.
Marina’s research focuses on critical feminist pedagogies in physical education, emphasising equity, social justice, and transformative practices in both physical education and teacher education. She uses qualitative and queer methodologies to challenge traditional practices, striving to create democratic, inclusive, and equitable educational spaces for all. Through her work, she aims to inspire change and encourage others to reimagine a more just and inclusive future, believing that physical education can be organised to make it liberating —a practice of freedom (hooks, 1994).
Dr Carmen Barquero-Ruiz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences at the University of Limerick, Ireland, a position she has held since June 2023. Originally from Murcia, Spain, Carmen completed her PhD at the University of Murcia in March 2023, under the supervision of Dr. José Luis Arias Estero and Professor David Kirk.
Carmen views education as a fundamental aspect of life that will shape both the future of society and students’ ability to navigate their place within it. As such, she believes it is a significant responsibility for educators to equip their students with as many tools as possible to face a variety of challenges successfully. From this perspective, Carmen sees physical education, approached holistically, as a subject with unique potential to serve as a vehicle for this purpose. In line with the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, Carmen adheres to the belief that whenever you teach, you should teach to question what you teach. This philosophy underpins her research and teaching, which has consistently focused on fostering student autonomy and critical thinking through physical education.
During her predoctoral training, Carmen’s work focused on exploring the impact of different pedagogies and the alignment between the various elements of the teaching-learning-assessment process to enhance students’ learning in a broader sense. Additionally, Carmen’s research has been influenced by her long-standing curiosity about international perspectives on physical education, which materialised through academic stays abroad (e.g., Italy, Scotland, Japan, Chile), as well as her interdisciplinary approach following the completion of her law studies.
These experiences, combined with the influence of exceptional colleagues, have guided Carmen’s current research, which explores themes such as the socio-cultural relevance of educational research and the role of internationalisation in academia and education. At the same time, she continues to investigate pedagogies and strategies that promote a physical education (and society) for all and maximise every student’s potential.
Dr. Sophie Engelhardt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Koblenz in Germany. She completed her PhD at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 2024.
Her general research interests revolve around the interface between quality teaching practices in PE (particularly cognitive learning) and PE teachers’ professional development to provide those quality teaching practices.
Sophie’s PhD included five publications in esteemed scientific journals in the field of sport science and educational science. Sophie investigated how cognitive learning is conceptualized and implemented in PE and how effective cognitive learning is in PE. Building on this, she drew on occupational socialization theory to explore the beliefs of prospective PE teachers regarding the implementation of cognitive learning in PE.
In her future research, Sophie aims to explore the transition of preservice PE teachers from professional to organizational socialization, focusing on the role that colleagues can play as socializing agents.
Since 2021, Sophie has regularly presented her research at AIESEP conferences online and in person and participated in the first AIESEP Summer School in Jyväskylä in 2024.
Originally from Kilshanny, County Clare, Ireland, Dr. Donal Howley is an Assistant Professor in Physical Education Teacher Education at Towson University, Maryland, USA. He completed his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Ben Dyson. Prior to this, he completed his Ba. Sc. and Ma. Sc in Physical Education at the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Limerick, Ireland under the supervision of Dr. Deborah Tannehill and Professor Mary O’ Sullivan. During his time in Ireland and the USA, he has also practiced as a secondary school Physical Educator enacting, exploring, and intertwining researcher, practitioner, and student learning experiences of curriculum and pedagogy through participatory action research.
His qualitative research is primarily focused on social and emotional learning, meaningful physical education, play, and physical activity. He currently conducts research across K-12, higher education, and older adult settings locally, nationally, and internationally. He has contributed to 22 peer-reviewed publications and 33 national conference presentations. He has contributed to nine international presentations, with eight of these being at recent AIESEP Conferences [2019; 2021; 2022; 2023]. He has collaborated with over 25 different scholars in the field and beyond to date.
In 2022, he was awarded the Mary Channing Coleman Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarship Award. In 2023, he received with the Faculty Academic Center of Excellence at Towson University Scholars Award. Last March, he was the invited scholar at the Society of Health and Physical Educators America Curriculum and Instruction Special Interest Group Lecture and Forum.
Dr. Alba Rodrigues completed her Ph.D. in Education at George Mason University (USA) in 2024. Her dissertation focused on co-creating a curriculum for martial arts with expert instructors using the Tactical Games approach in Brazil’ nationwide Social Service of Commerce (SESC) program in Rio de Janeiro. Alba’s main research interest is creating collaborative professional development initiatives with coaches to foster positive experiences for children and youth through game-centered approaches. Alba strives to strengthen her role as a researcher facilitator, co-developing context-specific pedagogical approaches and curriculum that address the needs of students and the community.
Alba’s dissertation led to three manuscripts, one published in The Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, and two others which are under review. The manuscripts provide an overview of martial arts pedagogy for children and youth, present combative activities as games, and discuss how social learning spaces can achieve pedagogical changes with expert instructors.
For 15 years Alba has been working with collaborative professional development at gyms, afterschool programs, universities, and social organizations such as SESC. Alba is currently the managing partner responsible for physical activity and professional development at Alliance Jiu-Jitsu, Senshi Judo, and VidAtiva Movement and Wellness Center in Brazil. A black-belt, passionate about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Alba has taught children aged three to adult women. She has also taught undergraduate courses using model-based practices at George Mason University.
