Anne Osborne

Anne Osborne’s teaching and research examines how media reinforce and challenge systems of power within society. She is particularly interested in how entertainment media—film and television—reflect and shape societal understandings of identity, difference, and power. Over the past 10 years, her research has centered on sport fandom and sports media, but really her focus is gender, with sport providing a particularly useful site to examine the social construction of gender norms. She has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as International Journal of Sport Communication, Journal of Public Relations Research and Sport in Society. She is co-author of “Gender Defenders of the Sport Binary: Mediating Discourses of Difference against Intersex and Transgender Female Athletes” (Peter Lang, 2025) and “Female Fans of the NFL: Taking their place in the stands” (Routledge, 2016) as well as co-editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom” (Routledge, 2022). 

Osborne spent 14 years teaching advertising at Louisiana State University and maintains her love for good advertising. She has held numerous administrative positions including advertising head and associate dean at LSU, acting communications department chair, and director of the media studies master’s and Ph.D. programs at the Newhouse School.

Recent scholarship

Bell, T., & Osborne, A. (2025). Gender Defenders of the Sport Binary: Mediating Discourses of Difference against Intersex and Transgender Female Athletes. Peter Lang.

Coombs, D. & Osborne, A. (Eds.). (2022). Routledge International Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom (A. Osborne & D. Coombs, Eds.). Routledge Publishers.

Osborne, A., & Coombs, D. (2016). Female Fans of the NFL: Finding Their Place in the Stands. In Routledge Sport, Culture and Society series. Routledge Sport, Culture and Society series.

Rosso, T. D., Ortiz, R., & Osborne, A. (2019). Put Me in, Coach. In Building Sexual Misconduct Cases against Powerful Men (pp. 83–112). The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781666986112.ch-4

Coombs, D., & Osborne, A. (2018). Negotiating Insider-Outsider Status in Ethnographic Sports Research. Sport in Society, 21(2), 243–259.