Lifting the Bars: An Ethnography of a Prison Gym

Abstract

This thesis presents the first ethnographic study of a prison gym, examining how masculinities are performed and negotiated by prisoners and staff at HMP Starling, an English Category B Reception prison. While gym access is central to carceral life, it has been largely over looked in prison sociology, which prioritises wing-based research or studies of sport more broadly. Addressing this gap, the thesis foregrounds the gym as more than just a place for exercise: it isa distinct social, cultural, and emotional carceral counterspace where power, identity, emotion, and adaptation are negotiated differently to other prison spaces.

Based on four months of immersive fieldwork, the study draws on 31 interviews with prisoners, 19 with staff, sustained participant observation, and experiential ethnography (Sands, 2002).This thesis also offers the first dedicated focus on Physical Education Instructors (PEIs) –specially trained gym staff – whose embodied authority and relational dynamics are mostly absent in existing literature. The empirical chapters address three key themes that emerged from the data: the gym’s impact on embodied experiences of imprisonment; adaptive strategies to the deprivation of security (Sykes, 1958) and the negotiation of penal power; and the spatial and affective relationships between prisoners and staff. Masculinity is a consistent thread throughout, with each empirical chapter exploring how masculinities are constructed and contested through bodily practice, institutional context, and relational interaction.

This thesis challenges narrow interpretations and homogenised applications of prison masculinities by attending to their local, spatial, relational, and emotional construction. It reasserts and extends Connell’s (1987; 1995) masculinity theory, by calling for a plural understanding of prison masculinities, where multiple forms coexist, hierarchies are disrupted, and hegemonic masculinity is reworked in the gym.

By advancing a reflexive, sensory, and embodied methodology – where the researcher’s gendered and physical presence both enabled access and disrupted norms – the thesis contributes to emerging shifts in prison and masculinity studies. It offers new insight into the embodied, relational, and spatial dimensions of prison life, and calls for greater attention to gendered practices underpinning penal experience and policy. This interdisciplinary account will interest scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, sport, and gender.

Date of Award	20 May 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Sarah Moore (Supervisor) & Kate Gooch (Supervisor)