Aurélie Van Hoye is a Research Fellow at the University of Limerick, granted by a Marie Curie Fellowship on the development of a tool to support sports clubs’ creation and implementation of health promotion policies. She is also Associate Professor at University of Lorraine, member of the Public Health Laboratory APEMAC.

Her research interests are focusing on supporting coaches and PE teacher in their role, especially regarding their health promotion activities and motivational climate, as well as more indirectly through the study of health enhancing physical activity policies.

She has worked on the evaluation of the impact and implementation of the PAPA project (www.papaproject.org) in France. This project aimed at enhancing youth sport experience trough an educational training on an empowering motivational climate of their grassroots coaches. She participated to the EPHEPA project (http://ephepa.medsci.ox.ac.uk/ephepa-project), being responsible of the data collection of national physical activity policies in Belgium. Furthermore, her actual work is centered on the development of an intervention for sport clubs to become health promoting setting, from intervention mapping to intervention implementation and evaluation (PROSCeSS project; www.proscess.org).

She is also leader, with Susanna Geidne, of the Promoting Health and Physical Activity in Sports Clubs working group of the Health Enhancing Physical Activity network of the WHO Europe. Finally, she works on the evaluation of physical activity interventions, especially on the implementation process evaluation using mixed methods.

At the sport Faculty, her academic duties encompass the responsibility of the bachelor in Sport Management from 2016 to 2019 and of a master named "Project & Territories in Sport & Health" from 2018 to 2021, to educate project manager able to develop (adapted) physical activity taking the specificity of territories (policies, equipment, values) into account.  

Civil Servant as State Civil Administrator since 2006. Studies in Law and Geography and History. She has begun her career in several fields of International Affairs and State Aid issues. 

She is Deputy Director General for Women and Sports at High Council for Sports in Spain since 2020. This unit is responsible for the public policies of equality in sport of the government of Spain. Mainly they are policies for promotion, competition, training, visibility, awareness, protection of women and vulnerable groups in sport, and professionalization of women’s sport. 

Equality policies cover gender equality, people with disabilities, and vulnerable groups, such as children, LGBTI community and migrants. 

Benoit (Benny) Cullen is Director of Research and Innovation at Sport Ireland where he leads a multi-disciplinary team which carries out strategic research, evaluation and innovation to inform Irish sports policy and national investment strategies. In previous roles Benoit worked in the NGB sector and also managed the Sport Ireland LSP Unit. 

Benoit and his team do large amounts of formative research and evaluation which underpins the development of innovative solutions to the challenges sports policy seeks to address.  His team work in close collaboration with the other Sport Ireland Units, the National Governing Bodies of Sport, the Local Sports Partnerships and the third level institutions of Ireland. 

When not doing research, Benoit loves being active in the outdoors with family and friends.  At weekends you’ll most likely find him on a mountain either kayaking with friends, hiking with family or mountain biking with his wife and young son.