Transforming Sport

In this episode of Transforming Sport, Sean Heath speaks with Jennifer Amann, a rising force in the academic and not-for-profit worlds connecting football and climate change. They speak at length about Jenny’s work in the field of climate change and football, the intersections of sport fandom and climate action, and the requirements to think, and take action, in a holistic manner to work towards environmental sustainability. Jenny discusses her recent work with Pledgeball, a not-for-profit based in the UK, and some of the lessons she has learned while researching the mobilization of football fans to tackle climate change. She has a forthcoming article on this topic which will be published later this year.

On the third episode in our mini-series on eSport I had the pleasure to speak with Dr. Holly Collison, Lecturer at the Institute for Sport Business at Loughborough University London, UK. She is an anthropologist in the field of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). Holly has completed extensive fieldwork in West and East Africa and South East Asia examining post-conflict development interventions and the use of sport. Her research explores youth identity, notions of community, international development, peacebuilding, social inclusion, and grassroots perspectives and experiences of SDP. Recently her work has shifted to focus on eSport as a space for social inclusion and community development on which she has co-published multiple journal articles.

In this episode we discussed the research she has undertaken with eSport stakeholders in the UK and United States, looking at how eSport communities can provide spaces for social inclusion as well as exclusion, including toxicity and tribal mentalities in these digital spaces. Space is indeed an important theoretical concept for Holly, and she has used a tripartite conception of space following Henri Lefebvre to explore questions around eSports potential for incorporation into Sport for Development (SfD) more broadly.

This week we have our second instalment on the topic of eSports. In March of 2021 Jamie Kiff, Co-founder of Gscience delivered aa virtual guest lecture to Sport Management degree students at the University of Brighton. There he spoke about his experiences working outside of academia in the start-up industry, working with professional eSports athletes to develop healthier practices in the professional gaming industry. With a background in sport science and human kinetics, and a Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning from Loughborough University, he has been applying notions of bodily health and wellbeing to Gamers, who are often stereotyped as the antithesis of high performance athletes in other sports. Through outlining his own educational journey, he highlights some of the practical industry skills he developed as a strength and conditioning student, skills he now applies to working with professional eSports athletes and coaches.

In January 2021 Dr. Madeline Orr delivered an online talk for the Sport and Leisure Culture’s research group’s 2021 Seminar Series. In her lecture she explores the bidirectional relationship between sport, the environment, and climate change, and why sport can be a vehicle for change to the growing and continuing climate crisis. As Director and co-founder of the Sport Ecology Group, Maddy is a leading voice for change in the sport sector, how everyone from grassroots to transnational sporting organizations can do their part to help ameliorate and prevent further climate degradation.

This episode shifts between the lecture she gave for the SLC 2021 Seminar Series and a conversation I had with her where we further explored some of the pressing issues of sport ecology and climate change.

In this episode Dr. Thomas F. Carter, Reader in Anthropology at the University of Brighton, speaks with your host, Sean Heath, about all things running.

Tom’s ethnographically focused anthropological research centres on the relationships between the individual and the state, the movement, migrations, and mobilities of various peoples, the politics of spectacle, and the dialectic relations of spatialized embodiment. He is currently working on a project centred around the human body, human movement, and how running makes us human.

Our conversation today centres on his book entitled On Running and Becoming Human: An Anthropological Perspective. We discuss the connections between our own moving bodies, our environments, and how the act of running literally shapes our minds, our bodies and the ways we experience our environments. Tom’s decades of running experience in both mundane and exotic places across the globe provides the route of travel as we wandered through the anthropological, neurological, philosophical and experiential aspects of our very human form of locomotion: running.

From the seemingly simple acts of running through neighbourhoods when we arrive in new cities to get an understanding of the layout of where we are, to the seeking out and exploration of spaces and places near and far from the places we live, Tom weaves together an intricate argument which positions the mind as an extension of the senses and the moving body out into the world. Our being through the act of running incorporates the environments we move through as environs, our individually positioned experiences of those environments informed by our societies, cultures, and physiology.

In this episode of Transforming Sport, Dr. Anastasiya Khomutova from the University of Brighton speaks with Dr. Robert W. Turner II, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Science and Global Sport Visiting scholar at Arizona State University. They sat down to discuss the issues facing professional football players transitioning out of sport and the unpaid labour of college athletes in the United States. Uniquely qualified as a former professional football player in the NFL, CFL, and defunct US Football League, and an expert in psychosocial and neurocognitive risk and protective factors in sport scholarship, Robert Turner’s ethnographic account of the lifeworld of professional athletes and the transitions between college, professional, and retired status highlights the struggles of pursuing the athletic dream. Here he discusses his personal journey and trajectory from professional football player to career academic researcher. Noting the mistrust which athletes often have of journalists, Robert discusses the necessity of an ethical approach to building rapport with interlocutors. He also discusses how a lack of focus on the transition to life after sports can have a variety of long-term health consequences and that teachers, coaches, and scholars need to support athletes to develop their skills and themselves as individuals beyond their sport.

In this episode of Transforming Sport, Alex Channon interviews Sport and Leisure Cultures research group member Sean Heath about his ongoing research with youth competitive swimmers  An expert in youth competitive swimming and children’s sport scholarship, and an avid swimmer, Sean Heath recently turned his attention to pain, injury, and the well-being of youth who compete and train with competitive swimming clubs. Here he discusses the importance of the physical, emotional, and social aspects of training and competition in swimming as a key aspects of youths’ everyday experiences and their well-being. Noting the disjunctures and disruptions which injury and illness can cause in the lives of athletes, Sean discusses the variations in participation which allows youth to maintain connection to the water and their sport. He also discusses the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the sport of swimming in the UK and some of the encouraging lessons a break from organized competitive sport can provide.

In this Episode of Transforming Sport, Sport and Leisure Cultures research group member Sean Heath interviews Dr. James Wallis of University of Brighton about his research on athlete centered approaches to coaching, and coaching youth cricketers. An expert in pedagogy of physical education and coaching, Dr. Wallis has had to adapt his coaching techniques in unique ways during the COVID-19 lockdown. Here he discusses the importance of constraints based coaching methods and how these, combined with the knowledge of the individual characteristics of the practitioners, can shape healthier, more enjoyable, and more holistic coaching practices. Dr. Wallis has a forthcoming book on these topics which will be published in September 2020.

This week I sat down with my fellow PhD Candidate Arthur Gaillard from the School of Sport and Service Management at the University of Brighton. His research focuses on the production of knowledge in the Sport for Development sector, trying to understand how the metrics for monitoring and evaluating these disparate developmental programs are created in the field, and how those are then translated and transformed by the various actors involved with these organizations. Our discussion centered around the changing landscape of face-to-face research during the COVID-19 global health pandemic, what effects this has had on his research, and how those within the SDP sector are adapting and innovating in this new pandemic environment.

Contacts for Arthur Gaillard:

Email: a.gaillard1@uni.brighton.ac.uk