As a PhD candidate at UTS and Sport Scientist with the Matildas, Georgia Brown is helping female footballers perform at their best. Through her PhD research and the development of a menstrual health screening tool, she’s examining how the menstrual cycle impacts performance and recovery – work that’s closing gender research gaps and opening doors for women in sport.
Georgia Brown tracks when champions bleed. Through her menstrual health screening tool and PhD research on the menstrual cycle’s impact on performance and recovery, she aims to help world-class athletes feel and perform at their very best.
For Georgia, football was always a part of life. Growing up in a football-loving family, she played the sport and followed it closely. But her journey into sports science began when she came across an article about motion tracking.
"I remember seeing an article from a sporting institute, and they had all these motion trackers on an athlete, studying how they moved," Georgia recalls.
"I thought, ‘Wow, that looks amazing. I want to do that’."
That moment set her on the path to a degree in sport and exercise science, followed by an honours year and eventually a PhD at UTS.
Breaking into the industry
Like many in the field, Georgia found that getting into sports science required persistence and connections.
After her undergraduate degree, she moved to UTS for her honours year, drawn by its strong sports focus, practical research and industry connections.
A cold email to UTS’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation led to a research opportunity at Sydney FC’s Youth Academy – her first break in the industry.
She then took a year off to gain hands-on experience, completing several internships including an exercise physiology position with the NSW Institute of Sport swim team.
These experiences, combined with UTS’s strong industry ties, were key in shaping her career.
Georgia credits her PhD supervisor, Professor Rob Duffield, for connecting her with Football Australia, which led to her role with the women’s under-17 national team.
“If it wasn’t for Professor Rob Duffield and his industry connections, I wouldn’t have been able to do my research which is embedded with Football Australia – or have had the opportunity to work with the under-17s,” she says.
“That connection helped me gradually build my career as a sports science practitioner.”
Researching female athletes and the menstrual cycle
Georgia now works as a sport scientist with the Matildas and is a recent PhD graduate. Her research focused on a previously overlooked area in female sports: menstrual health and the impact of the menstrual cycle on performance and recovery.
“At first, I considered researching fatigue and load monitoring,” she explains.
As I focused on female athletes, I wanted to study something unique to them. The menstrual cycle stood out – it’s fascinating physiologically and crucial for women and teams to work with.
"Women have also been historically underrepresented in sports science research because of their menstrual cycle and its hormonal complexity. But that’s finally starting to change.”
She started by conducting a menstrual health screening for players in the national and domestic leagues, identifying common conditions and perceptions.
Over three months, she then tracked 68 menstrual cycles across 24 domestic league players, focusing on two key factors influencing performance: hormonal phases and symptoms.
Using GPS data, Georgia tracked match performance and monitored players’ perceived fatigue, soreness, stress and recovery. She explored how different phases – like ovulation – affect running, speed and recovery.
“Players tended to run more during the late follicular phase than in other phases, but the effects varied,” she says.
“It highlighted the need for an individualised approach to training and recovery.”
Another study used wearable technology to measure sleep patterns around match days, revealing that players with more menstrual symptoms tended to sleep longer, possibly using sleep as a recovery strategy.
Working with the Matildas
A year after joining the under-17s team, Georgia moved up to the women’s under-20s team, working through a packed tournament schedule, including the Under-20s World Cup.
That experience led to an opportunity with the Matildas, where she joined as an assistant for the 2023 World Cup. Since then, she has remained with the team, travelling to training camps worldwide every four to six weeks.
“In 2024 alone, I spent over 90 days in camp across eight countries, visiting 15 cities and taking around 25 flights – including a trip to the Olympics,” she says.
As a sport scientist, Georgia focuses on player preparation, performance and recovery. She manages warmups, recovery sessions and injury prevention while working closely with coaches, physiotherapists and nutritionists to monitor training loads and physical health.
“In the weeks leading up to training camps, we track 30 to 40 players worldwide, collecting data on running distance, sprint speeds and overall workload. This ensures players arrive ready to perform while reducing injury risks,” she explains.
Looking ahead
Beyond her research, Georgia works to educate athletes, coaches and practitioners on menstrual health. She runs seminars and encourages athletes to track their symptoms over multiple cycles to identify patterns and adjust their training accordingly.
Her goal is to ensure better support for female athletes.
Most training programs and injury prevention strategies are based on male athletes. We don’t know if we’re supporting female athletes as well as we could.
She highlights key differences – factors like muscle mass, lung size and gendered equipment design – that contribute to the lack of proper support for women.
With growing research in this area, Georgia remains focused on women’s football and plans to keep updating her findings to improve training and recovery strategies.
“It’s a booming field, which is exciting,” she says.
But for Georgia, it’s about more than the science. It’s about empowering female athletes to reach their full potential and ensuring they have the support to perform at their very best.
At UTS, Georgia’s research receives no red card.
Because it’s not just a university – it’s bloody important work.
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