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Learn more about our invited speakers

Dr Natalie Barker-Ruchti

Natalie has been an Associate Professor in sport management and sport coaching, Örebro University, since February 2019. Her research focuses on how sport participation at the junior and senior levels of elite sport affects athletes’ learning, identities, and lives, also upon retiring from sport. She has extensively researched the history and current situation of women’s artistic gymnastics and continues to examine how the health and wellbeing of gymnasts can be ensured.

Natalie currently conducts the project ‘#gymnastalliance: An international study on women’s gymnasts speaking out about abuse’, which aims to examine the recent global outpour of gymnasts disclosing abusive behaviours and practices (started January 2021). Since the social media movement #gymnastalliance, Natalie’s gymnastics research has featured in the media internationally (e.g., New York Times and The Guardian). This research also informed Die Magglingen Protokolle, a large investigative journalism report published in Switzerland in 2020. Natalie was then invited to collaborate in the external investigation, which Federal Councillor and Sports Minister Viola Amherd requested (Rudin Cantieni report). The recommendations from this report are now changing the Swiss sport system.

Claire Heafford

Claire is the Co-founder and CEO of the charity Gymnasts for Change International. A survivor of physical and emotional abuse herself as an elite gymnast in the UK in the 1990s, she then became a whistle-blower after witnessing a horrific physical assault on a 10-year-old child by their abusive coach. Although the case was investigated, the coach in question was reinstated – leading her to realise that the safeguarding and child protection measures the governing body had put in place were ineffective at best.

Therefore, she set up Gymnasts for Change, and the UK’s 40 strong group legal action against British Gymnastics, as a way to support gymnasts who have been brave enough to speak out and ensure that this time – collectively – their voices are heard. G4C’s mission and vision have become so strong that it has now become a recognised charity and has expanded its reach internationally, bringing together people from everywhere in the world, to support change.

Dr Emma Kavanagh

Emma is an Associate Professor in Sports Psychology and Safe Sport, an HCPC Registered Sport and Exercise Psychologist (BASES SEPAR) and Chartered Sport and Exercise Scientist. Emma’s work centres on critically examining abuse in online and face-to-face environments, understanding the duty of care and enhancing safeguarding in sporting spaces.

Emma is the current Chair of the British Association of Sport and Exercises (BASES) Integrity Advisory Group and has been a member of the BASES athlete protection task group responsible for the development of safeguarding workshops which aim to educate existing and trainee sport and exercise scientists on issues of athlete safeguarding in the United Kingdom. Emma is also part of a number of research networks which have a clear vision to enhance the climate and environment in which high-performance athletes function. Her research impact has been recognised through her being one of 12 leading international experts selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to draft the recently published IOC Consensus Statement on Safeguarding in Sport (October 2025).

Dr Ellie Gennings

Ellie is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching at Bournemouth University, specialising in children and young people’s experiences of sport. Her research focuses on advancing understanding of well-being and human rights among children and young people in sport and exercise settings. She has contributed to the fields of measurement, well-being science and participatory research methods.

Currently, Ellie is leading an IOC-funded project on safe sport, exploring how young athletes experience and understand safety in high-performance environments. This multi-phase, child-centred study includes input from athletes, parents, and coaches, and aims to inform more inclusive and rights-based safeguarding practices in elite youth sport. This study builds on Ellie’s commitment to research that supports safe, inclusive and rights-respecting sport environments.