Biography
Dr Tom Campbell BSc (Hons), PhD, FHEA, is a lecturer in sport and exercise science and sustainability theme lead at the Mountain Bike Centre of Scotland.
Tom's applied work centres around supporting and promoting innovation and enterprise across the mountain bike sector and the field of dual career athletes. Tom has secured over £250k of external project funding to date and has helped several businesses launch new products and services over the past 7 years.
Tom currently leads two Erasmus+ projects for the university including the DIRTT: Developing intereuropean resources for trailbuilding training project. This project has brought a new level of professionalism to the trail building sector and will ensure the future sustainability of mountain bike trails. At the Scottish level, this has seen participation from volunteers, trail associations and race and event organisers – the upskilling of this latter workforce has already seen principles of sustainable trail building applied to the design and maintenance of racecourses. Tom has produced two publications from this project including a paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which achieved a highly accessed status from the journal with over 2200 full text reads and 5000 views to date. This research was subsequently featured in an extensive article published on PinkBike - the world’s largest cycling magazine and media outlet, with over 20 million unique users. Additionally, both the German and Spanish mountain bike federations are now translating the article into their respective languages, such is the impact and appeal of this work within the mountain bike sector. Further online articles summarising the work have been published by The International Mountain Bike Association and Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland, while IMBA Swiss produced an online article summary in both French and German languages alongside a further report featuring a subset of my data. The article was also discussed on the “Downtime” mountain bike podcast.
Tom's recent evaluation evaluation of the Leader funded "MTB Aberdeenshire - creating a sustainable tourism product" project was pivotal in securing significant ongoing funding and resulted in the implementation of organisational changes within Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland. Specifically, two coordinator roles have been created in the Tweed Valley with a similar remit to the Aberdeenshire coordinator and a particular emphasis on developing the ecosystem surrounding mountain biking in the region. It is anticipated that these roles will ultimately create additional jobs, grow businesses, and increase economic revenue within the region.
Tom has been interviewed by or had his work promoted in numerous outlets including ITV news, Edinburgh Evening News, Edinburgh North, PinkBike, Downtime Podcast, International Mountain Bike Association, Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland, Heart of Midlothian Football club website.