Paul M. Pedersen, PhD, is a professor of sport management within the department of kinesiology in the School of Public Health at Indiana University Bloomington (IU). He has worked as a sportswriter, sport management consultant, and sports business columnist. Pedersen’s primary areas of scholarly interest and research are the symbiotic relationship between sport and communication and the activities and practices of various sport organization personnel.
A research fellow of the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), Pedersen has published more than 10 books (including
Sport and the Pandemic,
Strategic Sport Communication,
Encyclopedia of Sport Management,
Handbook of Sport Communication, and
Research Methods and Design in Sport Management) and over 125 articles in peer-reviewed outlets such as the
Journal of Sport Management,
European Sport Management Quarterly,
Sport Marketing Quarterly,
International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship,
Sociology of Sport Journal,
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and
Journal of Sports Economics. He has also been a part of more than 125 refereed presentations at professional conferences and more than 50 invited presentations, including invited addresses in China, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, and South Korea. He has been interviewed and quoted in publications as diverse as the
New York Times and
China Daily.
Founder and editor in chief of the
International Journal of Sport Communication, he serves on the editorial board of seven other journals. He was a 2024 inductee into the Hall of Fame of the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA) as a Master Professor, was a recipient of the 2020 distinguished alumni award from Florida State University’s College of Education, and was a 2011 inductee into the Golden Eagle Hall of Fame (East High School in Pueblo, Colorado). Pedersen lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with his wife, Jennifer, and their youngest child, Carlie, who is in college. Their oldest children, their spouses, and grandson (Hallie and Liam; Brock and Brooke; Zack, Megan, and Nolan) live in Montana, Texas, and Indiana.