Meet Dr. Anna Posbergh! She is an assistant professor, researcher, and inspiration to everyone who meets her. I had the amazing opportunity to interview her about her career and story!
Dr. Anna Posbergh
Currently a researcher and assistant professor at FSU, Dr. Posbergh is a woman of many talents and titles. She’s a sports sociologist whose research is based on sporting cultures. She investigates what makes these cultures what they are, what ideas they reinforce, who is harmed and benefited, and the politics of different sporting cultures.
Her focus is typically on “issues of gender” in sports cultures. She studies athletes’ experiences in these cultures, specifically women, and how the media represents them worldwide. However, her main focus is in the realm of policy.
She looks at how policies are developed, who they impact, and their long-term implications. Regarding policies, she focuses on female athletes’ health and eligibility, determining who gets to compete in the women’s category, such as transgender women.
Her specialty is at the international professional level, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC), World Athletics, and similar federations. She has also done consulting at the national and collegiate levels to help develop modules and training.
Her Journey
I asked Dr. Posbergh what made her want to pursue this career path. Looking back, the memory that started her journey dates back to her fourth-grade field day.
During this field day, Dr. Posbergh says she remembers being 10 years old and participating in a race. At this time, she and her classmates were not split by gender. She won the race, as she was always involved in track.
In fifth grade, however, they were separated by gender. She remembers asking herself, “Why do we have to be separated? I’m already faster than all the boys.” The boys’ answer was that “girls aren’t as good as boys in sports,” and that stuck with her.
Dr. Posbergh asked herself, “Why is my category assumed to be worse at sports?” when she beat them less than a year ago. Looking back, she says, “It makes sense why I ended up here.”
She pointed out that she was assumed to be bad at math and science but good at nurturing and writing because those are so-called “feminine” qualities. Despite excelling in all these things, her gender caused people to view her in this false light.
Her Education
Dr. Posbergh truly proved those false accusations wrong with her education.
As an undergrad, she worked with the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. Together, they examined gender disparities in sports and other policies in this field.
It was then, as a junior in college, that she discovered her love for research. She said she liked being able to point to evidence to prove that she’s right when people who are uneducated about gender in sports tell her she’s wrong. She calls it “petty with evidence.”
She earned a major in Mathematics and a minor in Kinesiology. With her diverse specialties, she decided to go to grad school. She liked learning and was thinking about teaching, so she decided a master’s degree was for her.
She applied for an English master’s program and received a fully paid degree at Carnegie Mellon in Literary and Cultural Studies. She described it as a “fancy way of studying cultural theory.” She was a graduate assistant (GA) for the track team, and she considered it the best part of her day.
She wrote a research project that focused on the experiences of girls and women on track teams. She was intrigued by how the men’s and women’s track teams train together but compete separately, and she wondered how this changed their understanding and experience of gender.
From there, she knew she wanted to keep researching and become a professor, so she got a PhD in Kinesiology. This allowed her to combine her math degree, cultural theory, and sports. In her first semester, she took a class that looked at the limitations of natural testosterone in women.
Some women are born with a naturally higher level of testosterone. The eligibility for the women’s category for track and field was determined by these levels rather than your identity as a woman or a man. These women couldn’t control this, yet they were being considered men in these categories. She said she “took this class and ran with it for the next seven years.”
Coolest Things She’s Done
When I asked Dr. Posbergh what she considers the coolest things she’s done, she told me about a couple of her many accomplishments.
In February 2024, she traveled to Monaco to present at the IOC World Conference for the Prevention of Injury and Illness in Sport. There, she was happily able to present to people who shared her passions. Aside from her research, she ran along the Mediterranean Sea each morning and got to meet people that she had read about and looked up to.
This summer, for the 2024 Paris Olympics, Dr. Posbergh was in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the IOC Headquarters are located. She worked in their archives in two different policy areas.
The first policy was about when birth control was banned in women’s sports. From 1987 to 1988, oral contraceptives were considered a performance-enhancing substance by the IOC. Although this policy was later removed, there is little acknowledgment of it. She researched why it came to be, why it was a policy, and why it was covered up. The second project she worked on was regarding marijuana’s classification as a banned substance.
Favorite Part of Her Job
While she loves her research, Dr. Posbergh says the most rewarding part of her job is “seeing the excitement from students who want to do research.”
She has a couch in her office that students use when they come in to tell her about their goals and dreams. These moments “fuel her excitement and passion for her work.” During the interview, I could hear and see her passion and dedication for her students.
Advice
I asked Dr. Posbergh to give my readers some advice, specifically for women trying to enter her field. This advice, however, is beneficial to anyone.
She stated, “What you know will get you the interview, who you know will get you the job.”
Networking is a crucial aspect of any field. She advises reaching out to other women because no one gets to where they are alone. Someone was there supporting them to help them succeed. She finds that, because of this, successful women want to pay it forward and help aspiring women follow their passions.
Getting to talk with Dr. Anna Posbergh was an absolute blessing. I have heard her speak at several events, which inspired me to write this article, but having a one-on-one conversation with her was truly something else.
She is passionate about her research and the students who have the pleasure of learning from her. Her kindness, intelligence, and hunger for learning are admirable. Dr. Posbergh is an inspiration and role model for every role she plays. If you’re reading this, Dr. Posbergh, thank you for being someone to look up to in all aspects of life!
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