Dr Danielle Sarver Coombs | University for the Creative Arts

Programme Director of Branding & Communications, Associate Professor

Academic
Creative Education

Danielle Sarver Coombs (Ph.D., Louisiana State University, 2007) teaches advertising and branding at the University for the Creative Arts in Epsom, United Kingdom.

Bio

Previously, Danielle was a Professor at the School of Media and Journalism at Kent State University (Ohio, USA), teaching a range of advertising courses including ones focused on introductions to advertising, understanding consumers, and copywriting.

Danielle has published a popular textbook on consumer insights research as well as academic books on sport fandom and politics. Her research centres around the ways media and brands engage with fans—and vice versa—particularly in terms of sport.

Recent publications include edited volumes on sport fans and fandom (with Anne Osborne) and the women’s World Cup (with Molly Yanity). She has published on athlete activism, performative sport fandom, and the experiences of long-distance fans.

Danielle also has been an active public scholar, including a number of appearances on local, national, and international news to discuss politics, sports, and the politics of sports and partnering with leading scholars form around the world to produce rapid-response analyses of the Olympic Games and the U.S. Presidential election.

Danielle has taught Principles of Advertising courses in both the U.S. and UK and she is committed to helping students see the ways advertising can benefit the world and encouraging them to make positive change. She is a diehard fan of Cleveland sports teams and Aston Villa Football Club.

Research statement

Selected Publications:

AUTHORED BOOKS/TEXTBOOKS:

Coombs, D.S. (Anticipated publication: February 2024). Advertising in America: A Reference Handbook. Bloomsbury.
Coombs, D.S. (2021). The Consumer Insights Handbook: Unlocking Audience Research Methods. Rowman & Littlefield.
Osborne, A. C. and Coombs, D.S. (2016). Female Fans of the NFL. Routledge.
Published in the Routledge Research in Sport, Culture, and Society series (refereed).
Coombs, D.S. (2014). Last Man Standing: Media, Framing, and the 2012 Republican Primaries. Rowman & Littlefield.
Published in the Communication, Media, and Politics series

EDITED BOOKS:

Coombs, D.S. and Osborne, A.C. (2022). Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom.
Yanity, M. and Coombs, D.S., Eds. (2021). 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup: Media, Fandom, and Soccer’s Biggest Stage. Palgrave MacMillan.
Coombs, D.S. and Collister, S. Eds. (2015). Debates for the Digital Age: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of our Online World (2 volumes). A Praeger Imprint Publication.
Coombs, D.S. and Batchelor, B. Eds. (2014). We Are What We Sell: How Advertising Shapes American Life… And Always Has (3 volumes). A Praeger Imprint Publication.
Coombs, D.S. and Batchelor, B. Eds. (2012). American History through American Sports (3 volumes). A Praeger Imprint Publication.

EDITED PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP:

Jackson, D., Bernstein, A., Butterworth, M., Cho, Y., Coombs, D.S., Devlin, M., and Onwumichili, C. (September 2021). “Olympic and Paralympic Analysis 2020: Mega events, Media, and the Politics of Sport.” Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research at Bournemouth University.
Nominated for the Edited Collection of the year award for Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA), which is the UK’s biggest network of media and communication scholars.
Jackson, D., Coombs, D.S., Trevisan, F., Lilleker, D. and Thorson, E. (November 2020). “U.S. Election Analysis 2020: Media, Voters, and the Campaign.” Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research at Bournemouth University.

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS:

Salama, H., Coombs, D.S., and Osman, S. (2022). “Following the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers on Facebook: A Comparative Study between Arab and non-Arab Audiences.” Journal of Arab Media & Society, 33 (Winter/spring), https://www.arabmediasociety.com/following-the-2022-fifa-world-cup-qualifiers-on-facebook-a-comparative-study-between-arab-and-non-arab-audiences/
Tang, T., Schallhorn, C., Guo, Q., and Coombs, D.S. (2022). “The World is Watching Women’s Soccer: Audiences’ Multiplatform Experience during the World Cup.” International Journal of Sport Communication, 15 (2), 127-138.
Cassilo, D. and Coombs, D.S.. (2020). “International Coverage of the Pakistan Super League.” International Journal of Sport Communication. Accepted April 2020.
Coombs, D.S., Lambert, C.A., Cassilo, D., and Humphries, Z.. (2019). “Flag on the Play: Colin Kaepernick and the Protest Paradigm.” Howard Journal of Communications.
Coombs, D.S. (2018). “From Birmingham, with Love: Understanding Personal and Professional Performances during Ethnographic Fieldwork.” Liminalities.
Coombs, D.S. and Osborne, A. (2018). “Negotiating Insider-Outsider Status in Ethnographic Sports Research.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics. DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2016.1221938.
Coombs, D.S. and Cassilo., D. (2017). “Athletes and/or Activists: LeBron James and Black Lives Matter.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues, I:20. DOI: 10.1177/0193723517719665
Osborne, A.C. and Coombs, D.S.. (2013). “Performative Sport Fandom: An Approach to Retheorizing Sport Fans.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 16:5, 672-681.