Victor Merino Expósito joints the Institute as predoctoral researcher linked to the HENAC project

"It is necessary to give visibility to the LGTBIQ+ group, which suffers social discrimination, and especially in the sporting context, having consequences in their mental health and in sports practice."

 

Victor graduated in Psychology and holds a Master's degree in Psychology of Physical Activity and Sports from the UAB. He is a member of the Sports Psychology Study Group (GEPE-UAB) at GRECSE.

His main area of interest is the life career of athletes, that is, all those stages and transitions that they face in addition to the demands of sport (for example, studies, motherhood...). More specifically, his motivation and guiding thread of the doctoral thesis is to study the experience of LGTBIQ + athletes, going from a more individual level, such as the transition of coming out, to how to create healthy environments for this group.

In his doctoral thesis, Víctor will longitudinally analyse the phenomenon of professionalization of LGTBIQ + athletes and evaluate the resources and needs of high-performance sports environments, both public and private, in supporting the careers of this group. The completion of the thesis will allow exploring the necessary characteristics for a safe, healthy, and prepared environment for athletes who develop towards high performance, as well as the perception of LGTBIQ+ athletes regarding needs, resources to develop their career in high performance sports environments.

The thesis will be developed within the framework of the HENAC project, which aims to analyse the role of entourage in supporting the development of healthy sports careers (towards or) in high sports performance. The project is directed by Drs. Yago Ramis Laloux and Miquel Torregrossa Álvarez. The project team is made up of 16 members: 10 PhD researchers from 9 universities and other research entities and 5 predoctoral researchers in training.