Kirsten Spencer is an Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology where she leads the research team in Performance analysis, Sports Coaching and Youth Development. She is a director of the International Society of Performance Analysis in Sport (ISPAS)and President of Oceania ISPAS
She has spent the last nine years studying coach and player development in sport from the community to elite level. Identifying opportunities and implementing strategies with National Sports Organisations that enhance effectiveness and performance.
This includes the integration of technology (drones, VR, eye-tracking, GPS, video, audio etc) to enrich the coaches’ understanding, decision-making and effectiveness in their sport, the creation of coaching and performance analysis resources within the organisations training modules and co-designing the coaching programmes with the National Sport Organisation.
Kirsten works directly with Sports Organisations to provide the detail that has resulted in the modification their National Junior pathways to enable more appropriate player skill development, a wider range of physical movements which has led to increased participation rates in those national sport. Recently encouraging sports organisations to understand the benefit to their players of embedding the concept of bio-banding (maturation age) within their planning and selection processes.
Kirsten has presented internationally at the World Congress of Performance Analysis in Sport and the International Council for Coaching Excellence. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers.
Kirsten lives in Auckland, New Zealand