First, it seeks to introduce students to Indigenous sports that Inuit Elders have carried forward from land-based ways of life into contemporary sport. Through this engagement, students are exposed to Inuit life and culture, experience Arctic Sports firsthand, and learn about their histories within broader contexts of colonization and cultural revitalization through sport.
Second, the collaboration supports ongoing conversations with the YASC about how UBC faculty and students can learn from and contribute to the YASC’s ongoing work in Arctic Sports, while also providing students with valuable skills and experience in Indigenous sport contexts, in partnership with Indigenous peoples.
To support these objectives, two returning instructors—Eric Porter (Kaska First Nation) and Emily King (Tahltan Nation), who is also a World Champion in the One-Foot High Kick—led the instructional components. They were joined by the YASC Executive Director, Gael Marchand (settler ally), who accompanied them throughout the week, participated in all activities, and led classroom sessions focused on the history and culture of the Inuit and Arctic Sports. The first large class began with an opening from the YASC Elder, Gord Reed, who joined virtually.
Over five days, from January 19–23, 2026, Gael, Emily, and Eric visited eight classrooms and engaged with approximately 800 students. In addition, they connected with UBC HOPE, the UBC student chapter of PHE Canada, the national association for Physical and Health Education.
Compared to the previous year, the initiative reached more students and a broader and more diverse range of classrooms, engaging students across multiple disciplines, including Indigenous Studies, History, Sociology, Health, and Psychology. This embedded, experiential learning model created meaningful opportunities for students across disciplines to engage with Arctic Sports as living cultural practices, while also allowing instructors and faculty to identify connections across courses and shared pedagogical interests.
Special thanks go to the Yukon Aboriginal Sport Circle (YASC) for their generous support and collaboration. Their ongoing work to promote Indigenous sports across the North and at UBC is vital, and we are deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn from their leaders.
The UBC School of Kinesiology is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jesse Charlton as an Assistant Professor in Biomechanics of Human Movement.
Dr. Charlton joins the School following a postdoctoral fellowship awarded through Michael Smith Health Research BC and NSERC Banting in the labs of Dr. Jean-Sebastien Blouin, School of Kinesiology and Dr. Calvin Kuo, Biomedical Engineering. There, his work focused on transforming how we capture and understand human movement biomechanics by pushing research into the real world. Dr. Charlton leads an interdisciplinary research program that spans fundamental biomechanics and clinical applications, including musculoskeletal modelling, wearable sensing, human-interfacing devices, and biomechanically driven rehab for musculoskeletal disease and injury. Dr. Charlton has wide ranging experience, including work in the wearable health technology space, kinesiology, and physical education. His work is widely recognized for its impact across engineering and clinical research. Dr. Charlton received his MSc and PhD degrees in the Rehabilitation Sciences (Clinical Biomechanics) here at the University of British Columbia.
Please join the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education in welcoming Dr. Charlton in his new role, beginning March 1, 2026.
Dr. Charlton’s work is focused on transforming how we capture and understand human movement biomechanics by pushing research into the real world. Dr. Charlton leads an interdisciplinary research program that spans fundamental biomechanics and clinical applications, including musculoskeletal modelling, wearable sensing, human-interfacing devices, and bio-mechanically driven rehab for musculoskeletal disease and injury. Dr. Charlton has wide ranging experience, including work in the wearable health technology space, kinesiology, and physical education. His work is widely recognized for its impact across engineering and clinical research.
Potential Students
Curious and motivated students interested in pursuing a graduate degree or post-doctoral fellowship are encouraged to contact Dr. Charlton at jesse.charlton@ubc.ca
Congratulations to Dr. Jasmin Ma (Faculty of Education; UBC Movement for All Lab, Arthritis Research Canada) and KIN alumna Grace Schouten,on receiving UBC’s 2025 Partnership Recognition and Exploration (PRE) Fund. The PRE Fund awards up to $1,500 to bridge resource gaps to enable students, faculty, and staff to build reciprocal relationships with diverse community partners. This award was granted to Dr. Jasmin Ma, Grace Schouten, Noelle Virtue and Kirkland Halliday from the BC Recreation and Park Association (BCRPA) to deliver inclusive fitness training for BCRPA members. The project provides fitness leaders with continuing education credits (CECs) with the aim of improving accessibility of community recreation spaces and services for people with disabilities across British Columbia.
Online Training Directory
The online trainings can be accessed here for BCRPA CECs or on the M4A Lab website for free (no CECs).
About This Training
This training equips fitness professionals with practical strategies for creating inclusive exercise experiences for individuals with physical disabilities or functional limitations. Co-hosted by experts with both lived and practical experience, these modules will provide actionable insights that benefit all clients—because inclusion strengthens the entire fitness community.
Asynchronous training modules covering key topics include:
Congratulations to Carmen Golnaraghi, an MA in Kinesiology student at UBC who has been awarded funding through the Strategic Equity & Anti-Racism (StEAR) Enhancement Fund! The StEAR Enhancement Fund provides grants to help support community-led initiatives that advance equity and anti-racism goals. Carmen has been recognized for her proposed project, UBC TogetherActive: Supporting Connections Through Accessible Recreation. Keep reading to learn more about her vision and work.
Could you describe your proposed project UBC TogetherActive in more detail?
UBC TogetherActive is a pilot program designed to advance inclusive physical activity for students with visual impairments through structured, relational support. In this program, I work alongside my project supervisors, Dr. Erica Bennett and Dr. Andrea Bundon, who guide the program’s design, training, and evaluation. UBC TogetherActive pairs students with trained student volunteers as workout partners for weekly 45-minute sessions in campus recreation spaces. Each session involves co-navigation of the environment and engagement in activities selected by the student, including fitness classes, gym training, and sport leagues.
The program is grounded in relational pedagogy and principles of autonomy and empowerment, translating theoretical frameworks of inclusive practice into applied, actionable interventions. TogetherActive emphasizes shared participation rather than instruction, cultivating skill development, confidence, and self-efficacy while simultaneously fostering supportive peer networks. The program design is informed by collaboration with students, campus partners, and community organizations, creating a replicable model for research-informed, student-led inclusion initiatives in post-secondary recreation.
How will UBC TogetherActive impact the community?
Through the UBC TogetherActive program, students with visual impairments receive structured support that addresses both environmental and psychosocial barriers to participation. Many students commonly express apprehension or fear about engaging in recreational and fitness spaces due to unfamiliarity, perceived social barriers, or uncertainty about navigating physical environments.
By pairing students with trained volunteers, the program operationalizes relational and mentorship-based strategies to reduce anxiety, enhance confidence, and foster sustained engagement in movement. Beyond participant benefits, UBC TogetherActive provides student volunteers with experiential learning in adaptive practices and relational leadership, as well as training sessions with BC Blind Sports and inclusive program delivery. Collectively, these interactions contribute to a campus culture where inclusion is actively enacted through collaboration, presence, and evidence-informed practice.
What motivated you to pursue this project?
My trajectory toward developing UBC TogetherActive was shaped by my work as an academic mentor with the Centre for Accessibility, supporting students with visual impairments in navigating both campus and recreation environments. These experiences highlighted how environmental unfamiliarity and anticipatory social or logistical barriers can inhibit engagement, and how relational, trust-based support can mitigate these challenges.
Mentorship, recreation, and research experiences revealed that movement is not solely a physical act; it functions as a mechanism for cultivating self-efficacy, agency, and adaptive problem-solving. TogetherActive emerged from integrating these insights with academic frameworks on empowerment, autonomy, and relational pedagogy. The program translates these constructs into structured, applied practice, demonstrating how mentorship and guided participation can facilitate meaningful, confidence-building experiences in movement spaces.
What are some notable highlights from your time as a UBC KIN Undergraduate student?
My time in UBC Kinesiology has been profoundly formative and inspiring. I had the privilege of learning from guest lecturers, including Paralympians with visual impairments, their guides, and leading advocates in adaptive sport, whose insights into resilience, skill, and inclusion reshaped my understanding of possibility in physical activity. Hands-on laboratory experiences, such as KIN 235 and KIN 120, provided intensive, practical training in designing and delivering inclusive physical activity sessions, translating theory into action.
Courses specifically focused on disability, including KIN 345, KIN 344, and KIN 442, allowed me to design structured, accessible programs and build the skills to support participants with diverse abilities. Additionally, participating in the KIN Health Mentors program during my undergrad under Dr. Kennedy offered a transformative mentorship experience, allowing me to guide and independently support patients with disabilities in developing confidence, autonomy, and engagement in movement.
Every element of my KIN education, from rigorous coursework to mentorship, practica, and direct engagement with athletes and community experts, equipped me with the expertise, perspective, and inspiration to conceptualize and implement UBC TogetherActive. KIN has been an extraordinary foundation, blending research, practice, and advocacy into a truly transformative education.
Do you have any final thoughts?
This project is built with students, not just for them. Students with visual impairments, athletes with disabilities, their guides, and community partners have shaped the program from the very beginning. I am deeply grateful to the StEAR Enhancement Fund for believing in student ideas and helping turn vision into action. My hope is that this work continues to inspire care, advocacy, creativity, and collaboration across campus for students with visual impairment.
Thank you to Carmen for sharing her story with us.
Meet Marta Oliver Álvarez, a third-year PhD candidate from the University of Valencia (Spain) and a member of the Physical Activity, Education and Society (AFES)research group. To enrich her project and collaborate with a research group with shared interests, Marta completed two research stays with Dr. Erica Bennett and her team, from September to December 2024 and from July to October 2025.
What is your doctoral research about?
My doctoral research addresses experiences of humiliation in sport and Physical Education (PE) contexts through narrative pedagogy. To this end, we first conceptualized narrative pedagogy within Sport and PE, mapped the prior pedagogical interventions conducted in the field, and identified gaps for future interventions.
Then, we conducted a narrative pedagogy intervention with sport sciences students, based on reading and discussing a story about humiliation. Through this approach, we aim to raise students’ awareness of humiliation experiences, while also exploring how humiliation operates in such contexts.
What would you highlight from the work you accomplished during your time at UBC?
During my time at UBC, I led a seminar with the Psychology of Sport, Health, and Physical Activity Collaborative (PSYPAC), a group of faculty and graduate students in sport and exercise psychology who meet monthly to explore emerging research and shared scholarly interests.
In PSYPAC’s October meeting, I facilitated a thoughtful discussion on the use of narrative pedagogy within sport and PE settings. I presented key considerations for implementing narrative approaches in practice and shared preliminary findings from my doctoral work, which prompted rich dialogue about how educators and researchers might better attend to emotional experiences in physical activity environments.
Additionally, I also worked on the theoretical framework of my thesis, specifically on the conceptualization of humiliation in sport activities. For this, the regular meetings with Dr. Bennett were really helpful for tracking the progress, as well as her knowledge about emotions within narrative inquiry.
Why was UBC’s School of Kinesiology, and Dr. Bennett’s team in particular, a meaningful place for your research stays?
For me, it was really important to undertake my research stay in a place where I could both learn and enrich my work, while also feeling part of a supportive group. From the very beginning, Dr. Bennett’s group offered exactly that.
Before reaching out, I had read several of Dr. Bennett’s papers, some of which were among my favorites, and I knew we shared values and academic interests. The possibility of joining her group and learning alongside them was something I was very excited about. Once I joined the team, I immediately felt welcomed by everyone in the lab. My project was also very well received, and the regular meetings with Dr. Bennett helped me refine my ideas and move my work forward.
I also really appreciated that many members were at a similar stage in their academic journey to mine, which made our interactions very horizontal and enriching. This allowed me to learn from their experiences and projects in a very welcoming learning environment. I felt comfortable engaging in all our lab meetings, even though English is not my first language, which encouraged me to participate without fear of making mistakes.
How do you see your work contributing to more supportive/inclusive learning environments in sport and physical education experiences?
One of the most meaningful aspects is sharing and giving visibility to stories and lived experiences that have often been silenced or overlooked. I have witnessed how powerful it can be for participants in narrative pedagogy interventions to realize that not everyone experiences sport or PE in the same way, and how important it is to acknowledge and pay attention to those different experiences.
Additionally, because I conduct narrative pedagogy with future sport professionals and PE teachers, we are able to identify practical strategies for improving teaching practices. These strategies include moving away from authoritarian teaching styles based on power hierarchies, promoting more collaborative classroom dynamics and cultivating an ethic of care in which differences are not stigmatized but valued.
Ultimately in one of our recent publications , we propose a conceptualization of narrative pedagogy, which in my view, makes this approach more accessible to other professionals. This is important because it allows them to adapt and use it in ways that fit their own contexts and concerns, helping the field grow in diverse directions.
What are your future plans after your doctoral research journey?
For the moment, I plan to apply for a postdoctoral position to continue developing the work I started during my PhD and to explore where the path may lead. I have always enjoyed living abroad, so I wouldn’t rule out spending some time outside of Spain, and who knows, perhaps even returning to UBC!
Ultimately, Marta’s visit strengthened academic connections between UBC and the University of Valencia and opened the door for future collaborations between the two institutions. The School of Kinesiology extends its appreciation to Marta for her contributions during her stay and looks forward to continuing scholarly exchange.
Congratulations to Dr. Mark Beauchamp, who has been awarded a research allowance from UBC’s 2025 Distinguished University Scholars Award. This award is made to a select group of ten exceptional university faculty who have distinguished themselves as outstanding scholars in research and/or teaching and learning.
The PEHPA lab aims to better understand the barriers to, and facilitators of, physical activity behavior across the age spectrum and ultimately, develop evidence based and conceptually sound interventions that are cost effective and sustainable.
Dr. Mark Beauchamp was selected for the Distinguished University Scholars Award for his innovative research examining exercise and health psychology, with a focus on developing effective and scalable interventions with and for various populations (e.g., military veterans, older adults, families, children).
This distinction underscores Dr. Beauchamp’s exceptional contributions to the field and his commitment to translating research into lasting, community-level impact. His scholarship continues to shape how we understand and support healthy movement across the lifespan.
What if a robot could show us how the brain keeps us balanced? UBC scientists from the School of Kinesiology (Faculty of Education) and Balance and Falls Research Centre built one – and their discovery could help shape new ways to reduce fall risk for millions of people. Read the accompanying UBC news article here.
Illustration of the UBC balance robot, drawn by Julie Sugimoto.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have engineered a robotic system that allows scientists to “virtualize” the human body, essentially disassociating the brain from the body. This allows researchers to alter properties of the disassociated body so it feels heavier, lighter, “stickier” or more “destabilizing” and then assess in real time, how the brain and nervous system interprets and compensates for these changes.
Understanding Human Balance
When you stand still, your brain is busy processing information that is already a few hundredths of seconds old. Those small delays – similar to the lag you experience when you watch a video that buffers – renders your balance more difficult to maintain. These delays are increase in older adults or people with neurological conditions.
1. Inertia gain – how heavy your body feels (values below one make you feel lighter; above one make you feel heavier).
2. Viscosity gain – how much resistance you feel when you move (negative values push your body further in the same direction of movement; positive values resist your movement – similar to a damper).
as well as the “temporal” feature of the body by inserting a lag between balance-correcting motor actions and their resulting whole-body movements.
When the robot added negative viscosity to the participant’s body, their sway grew and they crossed the limits of standing balance more often, essentially inducing virtual falls. This pattern was similar to when participants balanced on the robot with a 200 ms sensorimotor lag inserted between their motor commands and resulting motion, where all individuals fell.
Next, the researchers asked participants to sense their balance under spatial and temporal body alterations virtualized by the robot. Participants instinctively chose a “lighter body” and a destabilizing “negative viscosity” setting as perceptually equivalent to the feeling of balancing with a temporal lag. Intriguingly, participants chose a virtual body that was “heavier” and “dampened” to replicate their natural sense of balance when a 200 ms delay was present, effectively cancelling their perception of instability associated with this lag.
To test whether the perceptions reported by participants could actually compensate the destabilizing effects of time delays for the control of balance, ten naive volunteers stood on the robot with the lag and “heavier” or “dampened” versions of their body. Remarkably, their balance instantly improved – no training required – and only one participant experienced a virtual fall.
Technical setup for the UBC balance robot.
Why this Research Matters
A research team from the University of British Columbia has engineered a balance robot that can virtualize your body, essentially allowing the researchers to dissociate your brain from your body. Using this novel tool, the team can alter the properties of your body so it feels heavier, lighter, more “sticky” or more “destabilizing”, your muscles create motion in unusual directions (akin to a giving your brain a new body) and can even insert an artificial lag into the sensory signals that your brain uses to determine where your body is. By using this robotic tool, the researchers were able to assess, in real time, how the nervous system interprets and compensates for the lag, i.e. the information from the past it receives.
For the sense and control of balance, the results from these experiments show that the brain processes information regarding the spatial properties of the body similarly to the temporal aspects of body movements. Instead of strictly differentiating spatial or temporal information, the authors proposed that the nervous system maintains probabilistic maps between balance motor actions and associated multisensory feedback.
These maps appear to be largely indifferent to the precise spatial and temporal properties of the body and exhibit flexibly to the sensory consequences of our changing body. The authors further proposed that any updates to these maps will exhibit some overlap, enabling the neural structures responsible for standing balance to potentially benefit from specific combinations of space and time characteristics of the body. Thus, opening the door for applications enabling a future without falls!
Beyond the lab
Robotics: Most bipedal robots keep space and time separate in their control algorithms. The current findings suggest a single, higher‑order controller that blends space and time could prove useful to give robots more human‑like, robust balance.
Clinical outlook: Age‑related changes, diabetic neuropathy, multiple sclerosis and Friedreich’s ataxia can add neural delays that may contribute to falls. The current robotic advancements pave the way for the development of wearable or assistive devices to help at‑risk people stay upright.
Funding and Research Acknowledgements
The robot was engineered, built and validated in the UBC School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, with funding from NSERC (Research Tools & Instruments and Discovery Grants) and the UBC School of Kinesiology Equipment and Research Accelerator Fund.
