Dunja Antunovic

Dunja Antunovic (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Sport Sociology. She teaches courses on the cultural, historical and philosophical dimensions of sport. 

Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, sport, and media, including:

• media practices in women’s sport
• cross-national analyses of media coverage in international sport
• theoretical and methodological approaches on media in sport sociology

Antunovic's research on media practicecs in women's sport builds upon the initiatives of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport to examine the amount and type of coverage (e.g., in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, film). In addition, her publications critically analyze the historical and contemporary changes in the sport industry, for example the hiring of first women in sport media organization, emergence of digital media platforms, and collective initiatives to promote women’s sport. She is also working on studies that examine how sport organizations (teams, leagues), sponsors, and athletes use media for advocacy. 

Antunovic is also conducts cross-national comparative research that examines representations of sports, gender, national, identity and disability in United States and in Central and Eastern Europe.

Her interdisciplinary publications have appeared in top international journals in the fields of sport sociology, sport history, and sport communication. Antunovic also regularly contributes to edited collections with articles on digital media and sport, feminist theoretical and methodological approaches, and global perspectives. She has served on the editorial boards for Sociology of Sport Journal and Communication & Sport.

Antunovic was nationally ranked tennis player in Division I intercollegiate athletics and she played for the Hungarian national team at the FISU World University Games in Bangkok 2007 and Belgrade 2009. 

Awards and Recognitions

Antunovic is a recepient of numerous international awards across the disciplines including: 

• 2022 Sociology of Sport Journal (SSJ) Early Career Resesarcher Award from Human Kinetics. Awarded at the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) annual conference
• 2021 Mary Ann Yodelis Smith Award for Feminist Scholarship. Awarded by the Commission on the Status of Women at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)

Antunovic is a Page Center Legacy Scholar, a recogtnition for receiving a grant in corporate social advocacy from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University. 

At the University of Minnesota, Antunovic received the 2022 Women's Philantrophic Leadership Circle's "Rising Star" Award given to a faculty member "committed to empowering women" in the College of Education and Human Development.