Dr. Maria Kosma is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. Her research interests include evidence-based and practical ways to promote physical activity and public health across the lifespan. She has drawn on philosophical frameworks such as phronesis (practical wisdom and moral reasoning), existential phenomenology (e.g., embodied consciousness, body schema, and existential freedom), and habitus to explain physical activity, lifestyle choices, health, and well-being. She has extensively published and researched the effects of holistic, performative, playful, and embodied (mind–body unison) movement programs on physical and mental health, physical fitness, and long-term exercise participation among clinical and non-clinical populations. She has conducted interdisciplinary research using observational, experimental, mixed-methods, and humanistic approaches, as well as systematic reviews and meta-analyses, in physical activity promotion and public health. She serves on the Registry of Experts of the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education, is a Research Fellow of SHAPE America, and heads the Sports Unit at ATINER. Editorial appointments include Associate Editor of the Athens Journal of Sports and Guest Editor of Frontiers in Public Health, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine.
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Kinesiology
Head of Sports Unit, ATINER, Athens, Greece.
Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), Athens, Greece.
Research Fellow of SHAPE America
SHAPE America
Associate Professor
Louisiana State University System, Baton Rouge, USA
01 Aug 2003 - present