Professor
Ph.D., Sport Management, Florida State University, 2007
M.A., Sport Management, Indiana State University, 2004
B.A., Sociology, Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea, 2001
Dr. Keunsu Han is a Professor of Sport Management in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University, where he has been a faculty member since 2009. He previously served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford, UK, where he was affiliated with the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and as a Fellow with the China Soccer Observatory at the University of Nottingham, UK. Prior to joining Towson University, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Sport Management at East Tennessee State University, where he also served as graduate program coordinator and as coordinator of undergraduate and graduate internships.
His research agenda encompasses four interconnected areas: sport volunteerism; student-athlete behavior; resource allocation and coach compensation in collegiate sport; and the broader social impact of sport, including public sentiment and soft power. More recently, he has extended this work through interdisciplinary collaborations incorporating sport analytics and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Han has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and scholarly books. Most recently, he co-edited SportPower: Soft Power, Diplomacy, and Global Influence (2026), bringing together perspectives from academics and practitioners around the world. He also contributes to broader public discourse through media interviews, invited commentaries, and guest columns, with his work and perspectives appearing in outlets including The Baltimore Sun, The Hill, The Washington Times, and the China Policy Institute. His international engagements have included invited talks at the University of Oxford, institutions in South Korea, and other international organizations. Notably, in 2025, he was invited to the United Arab Emirates as an international guest lecturer for the Sharjah Women’s Sport Development Program, where he delivered a multi-day program on sport governance and international sport management.
In addition, his research has received Best Paper, Distinguished Paper, and Outstanding Paper recognitions from national and international academic organizations. In 2019, interdisciplinary research conducted with accounting and management faculty in business received the Distinguished Paper Award at the International Conference on Economy, Finance, and Business. In 2026, his interdisciplinary research bridging sport management and computer science was recognized as an Outstanding Paper at the IEEE/ACIS SERA 2026 Conference and selected for publication in Springer’s Studies in Computational Intelligence book series. His scholarly work reflects a strong interdisciplinary and international approach, fostering collaborations across disciplines, institutions, and national boundaries to expand the reach and impact of sport management scholarship.