UW’s Wallhead Elected President of Global Organization of Sport Pedagogy and Physical Education Scholars

Tristan Wallhead, a professor in the University of Wyoming’s Division of Kinesiology and Health, has been elected president of the Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP), an international organization of scholars in sport pedagogy and physical education.

Wallhead -- who has served on AIESEP’s board of directors since 2014 and as vice president for conferences from 2022-26 -- was voted in as president of the association by his peers in June, during the AIESEP World Congress in Taiwan. A new president and board of directors is selected every four years by its roughly 400 voting members from more than 60 countries, Wallhead says.

“Serving as president is an esteemed privilege, and I am the first-ever president of AIESEP to be a U.S. citizen,” he says.   
                                                                                                                                

The nonprofit organization -- also known as The International Organization for Physical Education in Higher Education -- is a nongovernmental, multidisciplinary and multicultural professional association that empowers professionals in sport pedagogy and physical education around the world by disseminating high quality and relevant research, according to its website. The organization also works to promote effective, lifelong physical education, health education, physical activity and participation in sports.

As president, Wallhead will be tasked with guiding AIESEP’s 12-member board of directors to execute this mission. And he will be organizing monthly board meetings and providing direction to the various board member portfolios that “develop research and innovation, education and training, and networking to move forward how research and knowledge dissemination occurs globally in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy,” Wallhead says.

AIESEP -- which originated in Western Europe and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary -- represents the largest global community of scholars in sport pedagogy and physical education on an international level, and it allows scholars to disseminate their research globally, Wallhead says.

“It is an honor to be voted in as the president of AIESEP. By fulfilling this role effectively, I have an opportunity to shape the trajectory of research in my field on a global scale,” he says. “My hope is, through this work, I also can bring status and recognition to the University of Wyoming as a center of intellectual excellence in my discipline.”

Wallhead, originally from the U.K., came to the United States and completed his Ph.D. in sport and exercise education at The Ohio State University in 2004. Moving to UW, he began as an assistant professor and completed his full professorship in 2017. Wallhead’s research involves examining the impact of student-centered models of instruction on K-12 students’ motivation in physical education and how motivation for physical activity can transfer outside of physical education.

He has published more than 60 journal articles on this topic and provided the invited scholar lecture, “Taking it out of PE: transfer of student motivation,” at the SHAPE 2026 national conference. He also hosted an AIESEP annual conference in Laramie in 2016, which drew more than 300 international physical education and sport pedagogy scholars.