Daniel R. Lee (Danny) was born into a hardworking, middle-class family in the winter of 1970. He grew up on a locally distinguished council estate near Croydon in South London called New Addington. His early teenage years were spent at the Monks Hill High Comprehensive School. It was an education that was not only academic, but also personable and social.
Danny followed his father, Dickie Lee, into the British film industry where he spent the first fifteen years of his working life. He learnt his trade at Cine Europe Ltd, a prestigious 16mm camera rental house in White City London. Here he gained the fundamental knowledge that enabled him to go freelance as a Clapper Loader on TV and film productions. Danny then worked on several productions around the world as a Clapper Loader, Focus Puller and then briefly as a Camera Operator. It was here he met his wife, who was an actress on one of the productions he was working on. Knowing the demands and strain the industry can put on relationships, he decided to leave filmmaking behind and support his wife’s acting career, whilst pursuing other lines of work, predominantly towards sport.
An HGV licence helped to bolster his earnings whilst studying for a range of qualifications specific to the football industry. Danny has since gained experience working for a number of professional and semi-professional football clubs, and as a senior county match official. After a prestigious offer to work abroad at a professional football club, his dream was brought down to earth due to his lack of academic qualifications. This setback was needless to say, taken as a challenge and his academic journey was underway. Danny accessed university through a Foundation Degree in Sports Coaching at the University of Roehampton, which developed in to a Batchelor of Arts Sports Coaching degree at the same institution. (The photographs in this book were taken as part of a social regeneration research project in that degree programme). Danny’s hard work and resilience resulted in him being asked to become a guest lecturer on the BA Sports Coaching programme at Roehampton. During this time, Danny created a sports coaching company, largely around football, offering an exit route through education for young adolescent males. This was designed to help raise education statistics and lower crime in the local area.
As a lifelong learner, Danny then decided to undertake a Master’s degree at the University of Central Lancashire. This is where he met Dr Clive Palmer, who was his supervisor for his final dissertation. This became Danny’s first academic publication, Hatch, Match and Dispatch: a creative but nonfictional journey through research methods (Lee and Palmer, 2018, in the Journal of Qualitative Research in Sports Studies). Knowing that Danny had an inquiring mind, Clive helped Danny to take his learning to the next level of PhD where Clive is currently his Director of Studies. For his current research and having gained an insight to Danny’s extensive past, a PhD
project was envisaged that embraced Danny’s talents as a creative and strategic thinker, along with his background as a filmmaker. Danny’s PhD is an investigation of performance cultures and group dynamics in sport, using narrative and film documentaries as creative ways to collect data and communicate his discoveries. The Nelson Boys, whilst entirely fictional, is an exercise in to scripted data analysis which will be used in his PhD; with multiple voices and perspectives brought together to focus on a theme or social setting. In 2018-19 Danny was a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Physical Education for University of Central Lancashire, based in Changsha, Hunan Province, China, after which he returned to the UK to commence with his research and sports-business interests.