PhD Candidate in Kinesiology (History and Philosophy of Sport)

(Fall 2025)

Project Title: Divided Voices: Civic Contestation Over Sport Team Relocation in the Boston Metropolitan Area, 1967-1997

Sport arenas and stadiums feature as prominent sites in urban landscapes across the United States. Despite the status of these venues, teams often try to foster change to these sites, seeking new complexes and even new communities. My dissertation explores how Americans successfully resisted these changes by challenging the relocation plans of professional sport franchises in the twentieth century.

Through an examination of four attempted moves by sport teams in Greater Boston, I demonstrate how cultural and emotional connections to sport venues, leading to political activism by residents, shaped the battles over Boston’s sport teams. By integrating newspaper reports, maps, and archival documents that give voice to Bostonians, coupled with perspectives in history, sport, and urban studies, I contend that sport franchise relocation in the United States transpires within a broad civic discourse about a city’s political and cultural status. This approach helps illuminate the factors that define opposition to sport venues and the repercussions for urban spaces throughout the United States.