Susan Brownell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She began research on Chinese sports as a PhD student while also training for the 1984 US Track and Field Olympic Trials (in the heptathlon). She didn’t make the Olympic team, but she went to China the following year as a language student and ended up winning gold in the 1986 Chinese National College Games. Her first book, Training the Body for China, drew on that experience. After over 20 years of engagement in Chinese sports, she just published Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China. She is spending the year preceding the Olympic Games as a Fulbright researcher affiliated with the Beijing Sport University, where she has been working with Chinese colleagues on the “Olympic education” programs in Chinese schools. She is a member of the postgraduate grant selection committee for the International Olympic Committee (Lausanne). She also has a Beijing Olympics page on the website of the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

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