Dr. Robert Stebbins is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Sociology, University of Calgary. He joined the department in 1976, immediately serving as department head for six years. Dr. Stebbins’ research centers on the sociology of leisure, including conceptual development of the ideas of casual versus serious leisure. He has authored over 300 research articles and 65 books and monographs. Dr. Stebbins has served as President of the Social Science Federation of Canada in 1991-1992, after having served as President of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1988-1989. He was also Vice-President of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies (1993-96) and elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences (1997) and the Royal Society of Canada (1999). He was elected Senior Fellow of the World Leisure Academy in 2010.
Dr. Stebbins reflects on the many years he served in the Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, beginning with the period during which the department developed its doctoral program. He reflects upon his career researching the sociology of leisure, which he recalls was not initially reflected in mainstream sociology. There were challenges having leisure taken seriously given sociology’s frequent focus on serious social problems and societal ills. Developing the concept of serious leisure, Dr. Stebbins reflects on the development of leisure studies in sociology, and how the department of sociology at the University of Calgary became a hub where a more positive approach to leisure emerged, taking its conceptualization seriously. More recently, Dr. Stebbins discusses, leisure is taken up through interdisciplinary scholarship that is international in scope and scale. Dr. Stebbins encourages those interested in his research and in leisure studies to visit his website: www.seriousleisure.net where they may read more about Dr. Stebbins and his longstanding contributions to the sociology of leisure.