Research That Reaches The Mats
An invitation to academics and researchers: help shape the evidence base for UK martial arts, with reach no one else can offer.
Help Shape The Evidence Base For UK Martial Arts
BMABA is the UK's leading independent martial arts association: a not-for-profit Community Interest Company supporting more than 100,000 members through a professional workforce of 6,500+ instructors, assistants and volunteers, certified to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 under UKAS accreditation, and recognised in Parliament for our work on safeguarding and reform. We're now forming our Scientific Advisory Panel, and we're looking for academics and researchers to help lead it.
The Opportunity
Martial arts remains one of the most under-researched mass participation activities in the UK. We're changing that. Our advisory panel will guide BMABA's research agenda, strengthen the evidence behind our national programmes, from safeguarding and trauma-informed coaching to youth violence prevention and SEND inclusion, and help translate findings into practice across around 1,500 clubs nationwide.
What's Involved
Panel membership is remote, with a light footprint by design: a possible six-monthly digital meeting, with contributions otherwise made flexibly through our closed panel network. We're interested in expertise across sports science, safeguarding, psychology, public health, education, criminology and beyond. Appointments would be made for an initial term under published terms of reference, and all research involving our community is conducted under appropriate institutional ethics approval.
Who We're Looking For
This is a panel for people with genuine research credentials. We're looking for qualified academics and researchers, typically holding or working toward a postgraduate qualification, with real experience in research design, data gathering and analysis, or peer-reviewed publication. We also welcome interest from professionals with specialist expertise directly relevant to our mission, including safeguarding and child protection, sports science and coaching research, public health, psychology, criminology and youth violence, SEND and inclusion, and data science or statistics.
An active martial arts background is welcome, and many applicants will share our love of the arts, but to be clear, this is not an instructor or coaching role. The panel is a strategic, academic layer for the organisation: its purpose is to strengthen the rigour and credibility of our research in the eyes of stakeholders such as DCMS, Sport England, government and the wider research community. What matters here is scholarly rigour: the ability to help a national body build evidence properly, challenge our assumptions, and hold our research to the standards your field would expect. If that's you, we'd genuinely like to hear from you.
What Panel Members Could Receive
Depending on the projects members are involved in, the role offers:
- Co-development of research questions with reach across the largest member base in UK martial arts, with the potential to publish work across our c. 6,500-strong instructor workforce and demonstrate impact and reach through analytics
- Credit and co-authorship in research, publications and documentation you contribute to
- A published profile on our website as a panel member
- A demonstrable pathway to real-world impact at national scale, including evidence for REF impact case studies
- Letters of support for relevant grant applications
- Complimentary Silver membership for eligible practising members, with full access to BMABA's resources, CPD and platforms
