Robert A. Stebbins [Curriculum Vitae], born in the U.S.A. in 1938, received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1964 from the Univ. of Minnesota. He has taught in the departments of sociology at Presbyterian College (1964-65), Memorial Univ. of Newfoundland (1965-73), the Univ. of Texas at Arlington (1973-76), and the Univ. of Calgary (1976 to the present). He is now appointed as Faculty Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He was also head of department at Calgary (6 years) and Memorial (3 years). He taught at WICE in 1992, 1993, and 1998-2003 and was member of its Program Committee (2000-2004). In addition, 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 became a Canadian citizen in 1980, and has since become fully bilingual in French and English.

Dr. Stebbins's research interests in leisure date to late 1973, the year he began his theoretic work on amateurs. From here it soon became clear that leisure studies could be conceived of in at least two great categories: in 1982 (Pacific Soc. Rev.) Stebbins published the basic conceptual statement of serious leisure, using casual leisure as the comparative backdrop. Then, early in 1997, he published in Leisure Studies a similar statement on casual leisure. Between 1975 and the present he has published a range of theoretical and empirical articles, chapters, and books on amateurs (musicians, actors, baseball players, football players, entertainment magicians, stand-up comics, archaeologists, astronomers), hobbyists (barbershop singers, cultural tourists, kayakers, snowboarders, mountain climbers, and other nature challenge enthusiasts), and career volunteers, particularly those in the North American francophone communities outside Quebec. A third category of leisure – “project-based leisure” – was defined and discussed in Leisure Studies (Jan., 2005).

Of his 40 books published or in press, 24 center exclusively or substantially one aspect or another of serious and casual leisure. They include:

Stebbins's most recent research and writing interests center on volunteering among the elderly, leisure identity, and the methods of discovery in the social sciences. All his research on leisure has been qualitative. In line with this approach he has published Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences (Sage, 2001) and Experiencing Fieldwork: An inside View of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences (Sage, 1991) (edited with William Shaffir). He is presently editing (with David Horton Smith) a reference book on nonprofit associations and volunteers entitled Handbook of volunteering and nonprofit membership associations (Palgrave Macmillan, in press).

Since 2002 Stebbins has published in each issue of the Leisure Studies Association Newsletter, in a feature called “ Leisure Reflections,” a set of short articles on contemporary issues in leisure studies. 

Stebbins's serious leisure consists of playing in a jazz trio (on double bass), volunteering in Calgary's francophone community, and hiking and snowshoeing in the Canadian Rockies. For casual leisure he dines out in Calgary's restaurants and visits with family and friends.