Joshua Vadeboncoeur

Dr. Joshua Vadeboncoeur is Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the Godbold College of Business at Gardner-Webb University.

His research explores how sport shapes the social geography of communities. Specifically, he examines how sporting spaces become sites of identity, belonging, memory, and civic life, and how these relationships evolve amid cultural, economic, and social change. Through ethnographic and qualitative research, he investigates the ways sport functions not only as competition or entertainment, but as a form of community infrastructure that produces place attachment, reinforces collective memory, and structures everyday social life. Much of his work has centered on motorsport communities and NASCAR, where he studies the intersections of race, class, regional identity, and placemaking, while more recent projects examine how local racing landscapes influence community resilience, social cohesion, and the lived experience of change in small-town America.

He is the author of "Racing to Make Space: Black Fans in NASCAR's Fast Lane" (2025, Palgrave Macmillan), which examines how Black fans navigate and transform NASCAR’s cultural and spatial landscapes.