Corey Johnson
he/him/his
Karla A. Henderson Distinguished Professor
Leisure, Qualitative Research, Gender, Sexuality, Theories of Social Justice.
Biltmore Hall (Robertson Wing) NA
[email protected]Bio
Corey Johnson is our new Karla A. Henderson Distinguished Professor, the first funded distinguished professorship in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at NC State’s College of Natural Resources. Johnson comes to NC State from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where he is a professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. He teaches courses on inclusive social justice, recreation, gender and sexuality, qualitative research methods, and the philosophy of science.
Education
- Ph.D., Recreation and Leisure Studies, The University of Georgia (2002)
- Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research Methods, The University of Georgia (2002)
- Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies,The University of Georgia (2000)
- M. S., Recreation Administration University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1998)
- B. S., Education Bowling Green State University (1995)
Current Research Focus
Dr. Corey W. Johnson (he/him/his) is the Karla A. Henderson Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University and a qualitative methodologist whose work examines power, identity, and inequity across leisure, digital cultures, and educational settings. He has hundreds of publications, and his books include Thriving on Campus: Promoting the Inclusion, Academic Development, and Wellbeing of Diverse 2SLGBTQ+ University and College Students (2024), Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry (2nd ed., 2022), Leisure in the Time of COVID-19 (2022), and Digital Dilemmas (2018). He also produces publicly accessible, funded scholarship—digital shorts on geosocial networking apps, gender/sexuality, and digital intimacy—and co-produced two award-winning documentaries amplifying LGBTQ and transgender youth collective memories in U.S. high schools (2009; 2010). As a steward of his discipline’s knowledge creation, Dr. Johnson served as editor of Leisure Sciences (2016-2022), significantly raising its profile and impact. His own leisure includes meditation, yoga, hiking, camping, and spending time with his husband and pups: Harvey and Lewis.
Publications
- Divinity and unsettling tourism memories , Leisure/Loisir (2026)
- Encoding fat stigma: body ideologies and digital dating architectures , Fat Studies (2026)
- Individualized responsibility, policing, and surveillance: Examining the carceral logic in dating app companies’ approaches to safety , Platforms & Society (2026)
- Learning Through Tragedy: Student Deaths, Learning Communities, and Faculty Support , SCHOLE A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education (2026)
- Making, Unmaking and Remaking Masculinity Through Leisure , Leisure Sciences (2026)
- Survivors’ experiences of technology-facilitated sexual violence: attending to participant and researcher well-being with trauma-informed approaches , International Journal of Social Research Methodology (2026)
- How nature-based learning impacts teachers: Discoveries for well-being in and with the project EXPLORE community , Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education (2025)
- Normativity, discipline, and surveillance: affirming non-dominant gender and sexual identities in leisure , Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks (2025)
- They aren’t all named Karen: digital dating in a racist (or white man’s) world , World Leisure Journal (2025)
- A Thousand Catcalls: Survivors’ Experiences of Sexual Violence in Online Dating , Leisure Sciences (2024)