Fred Ariel Hernandez

Fred Ariel Hernandez: I am currently a  postdoctoral researcher funded by the US National Science Foundation  in the Department of Anthropology at University of California Irvine (researcher page).  My research focuses on sporting conditions in different places , diverse kinds of vulnerabilities produced in athletic spaces, and the ideological components of coach education pedagogies. In particular, I focus on sports for young people, disabled youth, and LGBTQ athletes in educational settings and across competitive levels.

My past research projects have included investigating: effects of early 21st century neoliberal education reforms on US school sports (2020); Covid-19 safety governance and communication strategies in local sports tournaments in Japan (2020); contrasting US and Japanese elite American-football junior development systems and physical fitness profiles (2022); expanding mixed-gender sports pedagogies and coaching practices within school sports and national level development programs in the US and Japan (2022).

Currently, I am working on a US National Science Foundation funded project investigating the effects of air pollution from local freeways and other sources of environmental hazards (e.g. wildfires) on school sports coaching pedagogy and everyday governance strategies in the city of Azusa, California. Hand-held and stationary air quality monitors are deployed to collect air pollution data by time and location. Information is available to coaches and community members. Additionally, ethnographic participant observation, interviews, and archival work are joined with sensor measurements to create robust and localized data sets.

In collaboration with Dr. Nadine Tanio, I am  also engaged in a  longitudinal ethnographic study examining how K-12 schools in the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) of Southern California are responding to complex and compounded crises associated with the  COVID-19 pandemic, racism, and persistent educational, health, environmental, and economic disparities. This research has been funded in part by the US Social Science Research Council’s Rapid-Response Grant on Covid-19, titled: "Everyday Decision-Making during a Pandemic: How Local Schools Attend to the Health and Well-Being of Students".

I am a capped member of the Puerto Rican national badminton squad competing in tournaments primarily in the Western Hemisphere (2003-2010). I have coached junior-level badminton in the US and Puerto Rico, including 10 years as head coach at Azusa High School during which the team clinched numerous playoff berths. I have been a board member and assistant organizer for Puerto Ricans in Action, as well as a speaker at events for disability justice organizations such as Los Angeles based REPAIR.  I currently am a collaborator with UCLA’s Disability Inclusion Labs organizing sports related programming.

 My PhD (2019) in Gender Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, analyzing local public school sports coaching to understand larger debates about athlete safety, participation versus competition, and coaching preparation and certification. For 2020-2021, I was a visiting researcher in the Graduate School of Sport Sciences at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, jointly funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, conducting multi-sited ethnographic research on the development of mixed-gender sports and coaching pedagogy.

Learn more here.