Sport in History Podcast: Recent Episodes
British Society of Sports History
The Sport in History Podcast brings you the latest in cutting edge research with interviews and talks with leading sports historians and up and coming researchers into Sports History. The podcast is a British Society of Sports History production from the UK's leading scholarly society for the history of sport. Click through to our website for further information on our events and to find out how to join the Society.
Our Friends over at the History of Jackson have been kind enough to share this short podcast interview with David Horspool with the Sport in History Podcast, with Jackson Van Uden, founder of History with Jackson, interviewing David at Chalke History Festival about his book 'More Than a Game: A History of How Sport Made Britain' published in late 2023 by John Murray Publishing.'More Than A Game' is available now to purchase in hardcover and paperback versions online and from all retail booksellers.
While the decline in Black American baseball players has received lots of scholarly attention in the last three decades, scholars have not spent as much time studying the decline of Black American fans at Major League Baseball (MLB) games. The few of examinations of the number of Black American fans at MLB games that exist tend not to take the structures of the fan experience at MLB games into account. In contrast, this paper examines that experience, which reveals that the persistent, but adaptable, marginalization of Black fans at MLB games—from describing them differently, to treating them differently, to segregating them, to building new ballparks far removed from Black communities, to not marketing to Black audiences, to making it difficult for Black fans to reach games—is a major contributing factor to the disproportionately low number of Black American fans at MLB games today.
Throughout the twentieth century women’s rights to compete in sport at international level started to be realised, with major tournaments and competitions starting to, reluctantly, open their doors to female athletes. Nonetheless, this battle had been difficult and long for many women’s sporting organisations who relied on dedicated committee members to push forward an international playing agenda. Formed in 1926, the All England Netball Association (AENA) was the first dedicated governing body for the sport, aiming to expand netball’s reach by providing opportunities for girls and women to participate in such activities beyond the confines of the schools within the United Kingdom by disseminating rules and establishing competition across the Commonwealth. However, with no globally agreed laws, there was difficulty providing international competition. To unify netball, the AENA committee brought together key netballing figures from across Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, South Africa and the West Indies in the hope of agreeing a new version of the game for international dissemination. This was realised in 1960 when the International Federation of Netball Associations (IFNA) was established, with AENA members being awarded selection of the first officers as a tribute to their dedicated work in bringing many netballing nations together. This paper will explore the development of netball’s international governance, considering the efforts of the AENA committee in creating a unified voice for netball.Samantha-Jayne Oldfield is a senior lecturer in sport history and the sociology of sport at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is an associate editor for Sport in History and is an academic consultant for England Netball’s netball heritage and archives group. A founder of the Netball History Network, she is committed to establishing an international community of netball scholars and publications, whilst developing her own research project surrounding the founding women of England Netball and the construction of a more comprehensive history of the organisation.
This emerging, ongoing research project delves into the historical influence of class distinctions on cricket in Greater Manchester, focusing on grassroots cricketers and their connection to their playing kit. With a background as a Salford native, the researcher is intrigued by the interplay of sport and social class, especially through the lens of cricket attire.Leisure time is a realm where symbols can easily shape social status, offering temporary social mobility away from work (Joseph, 1986). This study delves into the cricket kit as a semiotic sign, unveiling hidden narratives about class identity and cricket, primarily in Greater Manchester. It also explores how urban cricket integrates into the local culture. Material methods, particularly material collections (Holmes and Hall, 2020), have significantly influenced the research. The project treats the cricket kit bag as a collection and seeks to reveal personal connections to cricketers' kits, shedding light on how identity and place inform this collection.A reflexive mode of documentary practice is employed to critically examine the researcher's role in shaping and representing the research. This approach involves self-awareness and scrutinizes the researcher's impact on the subject matter and its interpretation by the audience (Nichols, 2017).In summary, this research project aims to offer a diverse urban perspective on the intricate relationship between sport and social class by exploring the class connotations of the traditional cricket kit and its significance to Greater Manchester club cricketers.Danny Orwin is an Early Career Researcher and Fashion Film Lecturer at Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University. My research stems from an interest in the role of filmmaking in investigating fashion cultures, and how through exploration of this, themes of place and identity can be revealed.
Dr Michael Connolly is currently lecturing in Sport Management at the University of Stirling, placed within the Faculty of Health Science and Sport.His research is centred within the Sport division and over the past five academic years he has worked towards producing the world's first biography of Brother Walfrid - most recognised as the prime founder of Celtic Football Club in Glasgow in 1887/88. Michael's thesis is titled "Faith, Community and Football: The Life of Brother Walfrid" and draws on fresh primary source material uncovered through rigorous archival work in Scotland, Ireland, England and France. The research project reached completion on the 1st November 2022,with the thesis published as a book titled Walfrid: A Life of Faith, Community and Football by Argyll Publishing.
This episode is a recording of a Roundtable discussion during the first Cricket Research Network conference, held at the Museum of Welsh Cricket in Cardiff on 23 February 2024. The discussion was Chaired by Professor Dominic Malcolm (Loughborough University) and the participants (in the order in which they appear on the recording) were:Michael Collins, Associate Professor Modern History, UCL and member of the Independent Commission on Equity in Cricket (ICEC)Raf Nicholson, Senior Lecturer, Bournemouth University and Chair of the Cricket Research NetworkMark Frost, Development Manager, Cricket Wales and Glamorgan CricketKate Aldridge, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Lead, England and Wales Cricket Board The theme of the conference was ‘Cricket in a post-ICEC World: Where do we go from here?’ and the Roundtable discussion was framed around three central questions: what had been achieved since the publication of the ICEC report, what were the priority areas for future development, and how could the Cricket Research Network contribute to the important work of reducing, and ultimately eliminating, structural and institutional racism, sexism and class-based discrimination in the game.
'For those who like the life nothing could be better’: The Games Mistress in Interwar BritainDuring the Edwardian period the ‘sporting girl’ was increasingly being framed as modern and aspirational. Intensive exercise programmes had been introduced at many British girls’ schools and the physical education colleges were graduating substantial numbers of women gymnastics and games teachers, the demand for whom increased rapidly with an expansion in the playing of team sports. Some headmistresses placed greater importance upon the character of her games mistress than any other member of staff, because the games mistress interacted with girls in their more spontaneous and unguarded moments; ‘hers was the exceptional opportunity of helping them to play in a manner to show not merely proficiency in games, but character as well’. This connection to pupils was reflected in the literature that referred to ‘what a ripping games mistress they’d got’, and to recollections of everyone having had a ‘crack’ on the games mistress in their schooldays.Most of these women have left little trace in the historical record, but that should not dissuade the historian from making the effort to uncover their life courses. Combining evidence from a broad spectrum of key primary sources, including newspapers, the 1911 and 1921 censuses, college records, literature, girls’ annuals, specialist periodicals, photographs, local and family histories, and the 1939 National Register, this paper illuminates some of the biographies and experiences of the women who led the development of sport and physical activity for girls both inside and outside the school environment, at national and at regional level. These narratives may lack evidence in parts, but they provide enough material to give us a picture of the lives of those involved and allow us to interrogate some of the stereotypes that have been assigned to the figure of the Inter War games mistress.Dave Day is Professor of Sports History at Manchester Metropolitan University where his research interests include the historical development of coaching and training practices as well as the life courses of nineteenth and twentieth century sports coaches. A significant feature of his research has been the pioneering of biographical techniques and the use of genealogical resources and he is continuing to explore new methodologies and sources for the creation of sports history. Dave’s current research projects include exploring the transcultural transmission of coaching traditions across national borders, the gendered socialisation into sport through the medium of Victorian children’s’ periodicals, and the lives and experiences of women coaches in the first half of the twentieth century. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the European Committee for Sports History, past editor-in-chief of the Sport in History journal, and a past Chair of the British Society of Sports History.
In the decades surrounding the turn of the twenty-first century, few brands across the globe gained more recognition than that of FC Barcelona. During this period, the club engaged in two mission that were seemingly at odds with one another. The first was to globalize the club’s reach and expand into international markets. The second was to retain its historic nationalist significance. This paper explores how the club negotiated the tensions between these two missions in the 1990s and 2000s, and in doing so, fostered a connection between Catalonia and international publics that had not existed before, all to the benefit of the region’s nationalist movement. After varied attempts at profiting from engaging with international audience, this eventually took the form of a brand-consumer relationship. In negotiating this expansion, club leaders and various interested actors not only turned FC Barcelona into a consumable product, but also rendered international fans as consumers. By providing a narrative account of this development, I show how nationalist institutions and symbols are not neutralized by global processes, but can adapt to and ensconce themselves in international networks all while furthering their nationalist purpose.Max Ferrer’s PhD research at King’s College London focuses on the intersection between nationalism and globalization in the region of Catalonia since Spain’s return to democracy in 1978. Organized around various case studies, including mass tourism, elite sport, and higher education, this dissertation examines the evolution of Catalonia’s nationalist movement, which was strengthened and defined by the global era. In doing so, it attempts to situate the role of culture in promoting an image of the region as a distinct political entity and evaluating culture’s role as a mediator between globalization and nationalism.Prior to his PhD research, he completed an MA at Columbia University’s European Institute, where his thesis won the Institute’s Distinction Award and led to a chapter in Routledge’s European Integration and Disintegration: Essays from the Next Generation of Europe's Thinkers.
Clem Seecharan, the distinguished historian of Guyana and Caribbean cricket, talks to David Woodhouse at a special event to celebrate his being given the Howard Milton Award for cricket scholarship.Clem talks about his youth growing up on Berbice in then British Guyana and the effect on him of reading the CLR James classic, 'Beyond a Boundary'. He also reflects on the great players that Guyana has produced over the years, including the recent match-winner against Australia, Shamar Joseph.You can access a wonderful video of Clem speaking at Moray House here https://youtu.be/ZOm5c0zpBvE?si=1V-o4MmeWp4rBhoc
Barbara Buttrick and the History of Women’s Boxing in BritainThis paper explores the life and career of Barbara Buttrick but also the way in which her achievements have been remembered (and forgotten). Born near Hull in 1930, Buttrick faced discrimination and disapproval in the UK and was frequently banned and boycotted. Moving to the United States in 1952, she enjoyed greater opportunities and recognition. In 1957, she beat Phyllis Kugler in a bout in San Antonio, Texas, to become the first sanctioned women’s boxing title-holder. In retirement, Buttrick became a key figure in the foundation and development of the Women’s International Boxing Federation. Drawing on material from the Barbara Buttrick Collection at the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield among other sources, this paper examines three key phases in the ‘making’ and ‘remembering’ of Buttrick in relation to the history of women’s boxing in Britain. It focuses first on her boxing career in the late 1940s-1960, then examines the interweaving of Buttrick’s story into the narrative of women’s boxing at the 2012 London Olympics, before finally looking at the portrayal of Buttrick in Amanda Whittington’s 2017 play Mighty Atoms. Matthew Taylor is Professor of History at the ICSHC and Director of the Institute of History, DMU. He has written widely on the history of sport in Britain and beyond. His last book was Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-1945 (Routledge, 2020) and he is currently completing World of Sport: Connected and Transnational Histories, which will be published by Routledge in 2024.
‘I've been with them longer than my wife.’ Searching for emotional clues in published fan culture. The highs and lows of following Lincoln City 1945-2000Histories of emotions in sports have been mainly noticeable by their absence. This paper aims to begin to fill the gap Ross McKibbin identified when he questioned the failure of historians to seriously investigate the emotional experiences of those who watched or played sports despite often citing the fundamental importance of emotion in sport’s enduring appeal. Likewise, Barbara Keys has recently argued that the academic focus in sports history continues to neglect the history of emotions, adding that historians could learn lessons from popular literature. Richard Holt has argued that the lack of research into the history of emotion in sports was due to a lack of sources. In response to these arguments, this paper will argue that historians must be innovative in using sources to research the history of emotion in sports. The paper will demonstrate how a critical search for ‘emotional clues’ in popular literature and published fan memoirs can contribute to a greater understanding of the continuities and differences in the expression and performance of emotion over time in the sporting context. It will do this through a case study of Lincoln City, a small lower-league provincial club. This case study will also significantly contribute to current research, which primarily concentrates on successful football clubs in large urban centres. Finally, the paper will shed light on how the history of emotion in sports can contribute to a greater understanding of the broader themes of class, gender and identity in post-war Britain.Roy Thomson is a third year PhD student at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University.
This episode Souvik Naha gives a paper on the relationship between cricket, nationalism and postcolonial identities in 20th century India.What cricket tells us about the making of a postcolonial cityIndian cricket mobilized a large and diverse popular following in the twentieth century. What was so special about cricket and why was it so important to a large number of people? Why do postcolonial Indians identify with the colonial game the way they do? Is the engagement with English culture a mechanism for empowering and modernising themselves? What does cricket tell us about the making of a public culture? This presentation, based on my book Cricket, Public Culture, and the Making of Postcolonial Calcutta, will discuss the moulding of the Indian public as cricket followers and cricket's role in the emergence of a postcolonial society. Through thematic explorations of cricket’s significance for the people of Calcutta, it will explore the making of public culture in a postcolonial city. The followers and critics of cricket in Calcutta are the protagonists in this history. A study of their entanglement offers two important insights into the making of postcolonial society. First, it enables us to understand how people attach symbolic values to cultural forms to reimagine and reinvent themselves. Second, it enhances the analytical value of cricket as a cultural tool that empowered, modernised, and gave new meanings to its community. Souvik Naha’s doctoral research at ETH Zurich, funded by a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, examined how journalists and broadcasters popularised cricket as an ideal everyday leisure activity in twentieth-century Calcutta. In doing so, it shed light on the dynamics of cultural transfer and the afterlife of colonialism in a decolonising society, integrating the histories of everyday life, popular culture, regional politics, and the transnational circulation of ideas in a postcolonial context. This research led to a monograph that explored how cricket gave the Bengalis of postcolonial Calcutta a tool to understand and form themselves as a cultural community, creating new social relationships.Prior to joining the University of Glasgow Souvik taught History at the West Bengal State University and the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak. He also held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship at Durham University. This project extended his work on decolonisation by examining cricket’s significance as a tool of reshaping Indo-British relationship after India’s independence, focussing on issues of race, mobility, migration, diplomacy, and environment. This research has laid the foundation for his second monograph, which will examine the role of sport in recasting the British World and the Commonwealth in the 1940s-60s.
This episode Geoff talks to cricket historian Jeremy Lonsdale about the MCC tour to India in 1926-27. The tour, led by Arthur Gilligan, was a pivotal moment in Indian cricket history with Indian cricketers proving that they were worthy to play Test matches in the very near future. Jeremy also talks about the political implications of the tour at a time when demands for self-government were becoming ever harder for the British government to ignore. He also describes the way in which class tensions arose between the European community in India and the cricketers from 'back home'.
This episode features the keynote presentation at the 2023 BSSH Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr Heather Dichter gives a wide ranging overview of the relationship between sport and soft power over the past century from the turbulent politics of the 1930s through the Cold War to the Beijing Games.
Dr Heather Dichter of De Montfort University is a leading scholar on twentieth century sports history and won the 2022 Lord Aberdare Prize for Sport Literature for her book, 'Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO' (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021).
https://www.umasspress.com/9781625345950/bidding-for-the-1968-olympic-games/#:~:text=In%20Bidding%20for%20the%201968,sport%20responded%20to%20political%20interference.
'The enemy within' football hooliganism and the miners' strike'
During the 1980s Margaret Thatcher’s government attempted to reduce the economic power of the industrial working class by legislating against the trade unions and defeating the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. At the time English football was an important part of male working-class culture, particularly for northern industrial workers and was under attack from the Government and Press over football hooliganism. It has often been argued that Thatcher’s trade union policies were designed to break the economic power of the industrial working class (Young, 1993, Richards 1996). If, through comparison, a link between this policy and the treatment of football supporters is found it will determine whether this conflict had a cultural aspect. Scholars such as Giulianotti (1985) and McArdle (2000) have anecdotally made this link but there has not been sufficient analysis of the comparison. Waiton (2012, 2014) also references the similarities in Thatcher’s description of football fans and strikers with the IRA but does not interrogate this in depth. This paper will address this and focus on the Government and press treatment of football and trade unions and assess whether the Government was seeking to bind the two issues together.
Tom Campbell is a maths teacher at the UCL Academy in North London, he completed his masters in history at Durham University for which he won the Richie Prize prize. Despite pursuing a career in education he has kept his hand in the sports history gamen and has spoken at various conferences over the last 3 years on topics such as the interaction between racism and boxing in regency England, the importance of memory in football fandom, the development of football stadia and the history of football hooliganism. He recently published 'The enemy within' football hooliganism and the miners' strike' in Sport in History which he also spoke on at last summers' BSSH conference.
Join Conor Heffernan as he interviews Turlough O'Riordan and Terry Clavin, co-editors of the wonderful 2022 collection Irish Sporting Lives. We are also delighted to be joined by Irish Sporting Lives contributor (and force behind a successful conference) Carol Osborne.
Irish Sporting Lives can be purchased directly from the Royal Irish Academy at https://www.ria.ie/irish-sporting-lives
Roger Domeneghetti is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Northumbria University while maintaining a career as a freelance journalist where he has worked for Associated Press, Sporting Life and the Morning Star among others.In 2015 Roger’s book, From the Back Page to the Front Room, a history of England’s football media, was short-listed for the BSSH’s Aberdare Prize and he has now followed up with Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Britain, Sport and the 1980s published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2023.https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442996/everybody-wants-to-rule-the-world-by-domeneghetti-roger/9781787290594
Conor Heffernan on US Women's Weightlifting in the 80s by British Society of Sports History
The geographies and finances of bare-knuckle prize-fighting in Britain, 1860-1880From the mid-nineteenth century bare-knuckle prize-fighting in Britain was reported as being in retreat. Yet, despite opposition and condemnation prize-fighting retained a ubiquitous social and cultural presence, both inside and outside the ring. Large crowds made up of people from all classes and walks of life continued to enjoy the bloody and atavistic spectacle of two boxers fighting until one was unable to come 'up to scratch'. Well-known fighters enjoyed considerable fame and fortune, however, for many it was a precarious occupation, but deemed worth the risks involved. Most studies of prize-fighting have focused on the earlier bare-knuckle Regency ‘Golden Age’ or on twentieth-century gloved boxing and this transformational and transitional phase of prize-fighting is largely ignored or used to compare against the inexorable advance of modernised and more commercially successful sports. However, this period witnessed the most remarkable bare-knuckle fight in Britain for decades and the Queensberry Rules introduced a more acceptable and better-regulated alternative. This paper uses my current research to explore the link between the geographies and finances of prize-fighting. It reveals that rather than witnessing the decline and fall of prize-fighting it had in fact flourished in new contexts and persisted into the late-nineteenth century and beyond. Ben Duncan-Jones is a PhD student at De Montfort University.
Andy Carter - Victorians and sport in the classical world by British Society of Sports History
This episode features a paper given by Katie Holmes at the IHR on women's running.Until October 1975, women in the UK did not compete in marathons, nor were they allowed run in any other long-distance road races. Women’s Amateur Athletic Association rules prohibited them from racing further than 6000m. Road racing was an almost entirely male preserve.In May 1964, Scottish runner Dale Greig competed in the Isle of Wight Marathon, a lone woman in a field of 67 men, with the permission of the race organisers. Her run was covered by the national press but did not act as a catalyst for change. By the early 1970s, more women were challenging the athletics governing bodies’ rules and seeking to take their place on the start line at road races. These women saw themselves as long-distance runners and through their activism they asserted that identity for themselves and asserted the right of all women to run.In this paper, I will give examples of the varied ways in which women broke the rules. I will consider the wider meaning and impact of their activism in the context of changes in women’s sport and the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s.My paper draws on oral history interviews, contemporary coverage of the issue in Athletics Weekly and the press and archival research. Katie Holmes is a runner and independent sports historian from Nottingham. Her research into the history of women’s distance running in the UK is driven by a desire to capture stories which might otherwise be lost and to recover, and uncover, stories which have faded out of the collective memory due to the marginalisation of women in sport. In 2020, she was awarded an Independent Researcher Fellowship by the Women’s History Network for her research into Dale Greig. In 2022 she was awarded the British Society of Sports History Sporting Inequalities prize. She is a trustee of the British Society of Sports History.
Brother Walfrid (Andrew Kerins) is best known for founding Celtic F.C. in 1888. While his name is known well within the club's history, biographical details of Walfrid are often lacking. Listen as Conor speaks with Dr. Michael Connolly from Sterling University concerning Michael's new book,Walfrid: A Life of Faith Community and Football. The book can be purchased directly from Thirsty Books for a delightfully reasonable fee of £20!
This episode features a paper given by Alec Hurley at the British Society of Sport History's Sport & Leisure History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London.Though sport clubs are universal, there exists – as nineteenth century French diplomat Alexis DeTocqueville claimed – a uniquely American disposition toward the formation of associations. This presentation will examine the role of nineteenth-century urban sports clubs through the nexus of place, space, and cultural identity. In doing so, I will bring together digital history, urban history, and local community histories to understand cultural relationships in a post-industrial city. Literature on smaller industrial areas, as opposed to large metropoles, remains underexamined. Roy Rosenzweig addressed that concern in his work on the labor history of immigrants in Worchester, Massachusetts, when he claimed, “the evidence from one medium-sized city can only resolve these questions in tentative ways.” He did, however, provide a caveat that if reliable data could be elicited from comparative cities, scholars could draw grander conclusions. My choice of location: Rochester, New York, fits the requirements for Rosenzweig’s comparative city. As such this presentation will explore how I used and continue to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to demonstrate the interaction, evolution, and shifting impact that various ethnic communities had on the physical infrastructure and cultural development of Rochester. With a goal of expanding the research on a global scale, this presentation offers insight into the expansive and groundbreaking intersection of sport studies, the digital humanities, and multicultural narratives. Alec S. Hurley is an adjunct professor at St. John Fisher University in Rochester, NY, where he teaches courses across the sport humanities. This presentation is derived from his dissertation, which he completed in the summer of 2022 from the University of Texas at Austin under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Hunt. He has published and presented internationally on sport, cultural identity, and urban community.
This episode Geoff talks to Jeremy Lonsdale about his latest work on Yorkshire cricket history, 'A Game Emerging: Yorkshire before the coming of the All England Eleven'.The book tells the story of Yorkshire cricket from c. 1750 to the 1840s and in their conversation Geoff and Jeremy discuss the way in which cricket fitted into wider societal change in the county in the 19th Century.Jeremy also discusses his forthcoming book on the MCC's tour of India in 1926/7 led by Arthur Gilligan.
In this episode Rob Colls examines the ‘Fight of the Century’ - between the American John Carmel Heenan and the British boxer ‘Brighton Titch’ Tom Sayers - which took place on 17th April 1860. The fight was a landmark in the history of international sport whose staging and coverage encapsulated many of the dramatic social, technological and economic changes taking place on both sides of the Atlantic in the Victorian era. Robert Colls is Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort and his latest book, This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England 1760-1960 (OUP: 2020) won the prestigious Lord Aberdare Prize for the best work of sports history, awarded by the British Society of Sports History.
Eric Blakely gives a paper on Zoom about his fascinating research into the social background of the 750 or so athletes who competed for Great Britain and Ireland in the 1908 London Olympics. Eric's paper is followed by questions from the audience.
Join Conor Heffernan, Oliver Knape and Alan McDougall as they discuss the new edited collection Football Nation: The Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society. Published in 2022, this collection draws from a range of different fields to discuss the socio-political and cultural importance of football in Germany across the twentieth-century. For more information seehttps://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/DawsonFootball
This episode Geoff talks to David Woodhouse about his quadruple award-winning book, 'Who Only Cricket Know: Hutton's Men in the West Indies 1953/54'.
Held at the London Library in central London it's a wide ranging discussion in which David explains why the MCC tour of that year was a key moment in the history of cricket and society more generally on both sides of the Atlantic.
Inspired by CLR James's 'Beyond a Boundary' David explores the way in which the England team embodied the class tensions of post-War Britain and also the way in which racial tension and the struggle for independence was a constant presence in what was billed as a struggle for the title of world champions of cricket.
This episode is a recording of the paper given by Max Portman at the Institute of Historical Research on 14th Nov 2022.
If one is to talk about the importance of sport within East London, West Ham United is always a part of the conversation. As the premier football team within the area, West Ham United are ingrained in the popular culture psyche of East London as much as pie & mash or Eastenders is and therefore deserves our focus as historians, regardless of our scope on the area. But the most important sporting event to dominate East London in our recent history is the 2012 Olympic games, held in Stratford.
Whilst the games themselves were a roaring success, there were many questions regarding the legacy of the Olympic stadium, the centrepiece of the games and its future. Desperate to avoid the disasters that had befallen previous Olympic venues such as the now derelict 2004 Olympics venues in Athens, the government launched a bidding process that would decide and protect the legacy of the 2012 games. In 2013, West Ham would agree to a deal that would see them move into the stadium in 2016 and protect this legacy. However, the road to becoming the tenants of the Olympic Stadium was often contentious and controversial, with the first bidding process collapsing, the club’s rental agreement for the stadium coming under heavy public scrutiny and a 2017 review highlighting the failures of the entire process.
This episode highlights a 7-year journey from 2010 to 2017 of a lengthy, complicated process that saw interpersonal relationships, alleged government incompetence and multiple legal challenges become key aspects of one club’s bid to take over a new stadium. It also examines the key parties involved, such as who benefitted the most from the stadium and who were the subsequent losers in this process too. Finally, it examines the legacy of the Olympic stadium both as the new home of West Ham United and as a political football for opposing sides to kick about in blaming one another for the stadium’s failures.
Max Portman is a final-year PhD student at the University of Chichester, with a focus on West Ham United as a nexus of communities in East London since 1981 As a West Ham fan and a budding academic, Max saw the opportunity with his thesis to utilise his passion for the club, as well as carry on the great academic work, focused on West Ham that began with Charles Korr. Today's paper will be focusing on the club's, albeit controversial journey, to becoming tenants of the Olympic Stadium.
This episode Geoff talks to Dr Rich Parry about his latest book, Swallows and Hawk, which tells the history of South Africa through the medium of MCC cricket tours .
Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century Rich tells us how cricket and the development of colonial capitalism went hand in hand throughout the twentieth century on the continent of Africa and how cricket was complicit with, even implicated in the development of the racist state of white majority rule under the apartheid system.
There's also talk of the pioneering women's tour of 1961-62 as well as lots of cricket chat, culminating in a discussion of the D'Oliveria Affair.
Join Conor Heffernan and David Patrick as they discuss David's upcoming co-edited book with Ian Phimister, A Boxing Legacy: The Life and Works of Writer and Cartoonist Ted Carroll (Rowman, 2023). Ted Carroll was one of the greatest American artists and sportswriters of the twentieth century, most notably as a boxing cartoonist and journalist. As a Black man working in an era when boxing was one of the few outlets where Black athletes could achieve wealth, success, and recognition, Carroll’s commentary on the sport provides a profound perspective on race and the history of boxing.
Link available at :
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538164808/A-Boxing-Legacy-The-Life-and-Works-of-Writer-and-Cartoonist-Ted-Carroll
The Accidental Sports Historian
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bengaluru.
For many years, Ramachandra Guha wrote scholarly, heavily footnoted, academic books and papers which dealt with subjects other than sport, while moonlighting during the weekends as a writer of popular, anecdotal, articles on Indian cricket and cricketers. The serendipitous discovery that India’s first great slow bowler, Palwankar Baloo, played a modest role in a political controversy that took place long after he retired from the game, encouraged Guha to bring his profession and passion together. The outcome was his book A Corner of a Foreign Field, a social history of cricket in India.
Guha discusses the methodological lessons he learnt while researching the book, and also speaks about the future prospects for sports history.
His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), and a widely acclaimed history of his country, India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007).
He is also the author of a two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi Before India, 2013, and Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 2018, both published by Knopf), and of a memoir of his life as a cricket fan, The Commonwealth of Cricket (William Collins, 2020).
Professor Richard Holt, whose critical sport on British sport history, opens the BSSH's 40th anniversary with a retrospective keynote on the development of British sport history and the areas still in need of historical attention. We are thankful to Professor Holt for a fascinating paper, which can also be found in print form online at
https://www.sportinhistory.org/articles/taking-stock-british-sports-history-forty-years
Join Conor and Professor Mike Cronin for a retrospective discussion on Professor Cronin's own career in Irish sport history, the rise of sport history as a discipline in Ireland and the areas still in need of attention.
Professor Mike Cronin has been the Academic Director of Boston College Ireland since 2005. He was educated at the University of Kent and Oxford University where he was awarded his D.Phil. He has published widely on various aspects of Irish history, and is a renowned scholar in the area of sport. He is a regular media commentator on aspects of Irish and sporting history. While at BC, Professor Cronin has developed a series of major public history projects based around Irish topics including the 2008-12 GAA Oral History Project, and since 2013, the major online repository and real time history project for the Irish Decade of Centenaries, Century Ireland.
Join Conor Heffernan and Paul Hawkins as they discuss Paul's new book on English football, the triumph of 1966 and England's relationship with the broader European football community.
Rob Colls is Professor Emeritus of Sports History at De Montfort University.
In his Keynote speech at the BSSH Conference 2022 he talks passionately about his life as a historian of sport and his research for his award-winning book, 'This Sporting Life', which tells the story of sport in England from the 18th to the 20th Centuries.
EDI Rep on the BSSH Exec Dr Amanda Callan-Spenn hosts a round table discussion of the issues around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the world of sports history with a panel of academics at various stages of their careers at the BSSH 2022 Conference at De Montfort University.
On the panel:-
Dr Paul Campbell (University of Leicester) Dr Lydia Furse (De Montfort University/Twickenham Rugby Museum) Prof Malcolm Maclean (University of Gibraltar) Dr Rafaelle Nicholson (Bournemouth University)
Join Conor Heffernan and Dr. Alexander Jackson as they discuss Dr. Jackson's new book, Football's Great War: Association Football on the English Home Front, 1914–1918. Learn how English football survived without professional football, the players who played on regardless, illicit payments and so much more.
Dr. Jackson's new book is available to buy from Amazon, Pen & Sword and other major bookstores.
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Footballs-Great-War-Hardback/p/20383
South African cricket writer Rich Parry talks to India's leading cricket historian Ram Guha about his life in the game and the state of cricket in India and the world today.
Join Conor Heffernan and Martin Johnes as they discuss the development of Welsh sport history, Martin's own career trajectory as well as some speculations on the field's future.
Another podcast to celebrate the BSSH 40th anniversary this year. Today Katie Taylor chats with Dr Neil Carter from the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University.
This special podcast episode is part of a series celebrating the British Society of Sports History’s 40th Anniversary. Throughout this series we will be talking to a variety of our members. From those who have been there since the beginning, those that have played important roles in the society, and those who have led changes. Today we are joined by Dr Carol Osborne and Dr Fiona Skillen. Carol is an independent researcher and a part-time researcher developer working at the University of Huddersfield. Fiona is a Senior Lecturer in History at Glasgow Caledonian University.
This episode Katie Talks to Max Portman about the history of West Ham Football Club in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.
Max is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chichester and his current title is: How West Ham United operates as a nexus of communities since 1981?
This episode features a paper given by Jon Hughes at the BSSH's seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research.
Jon's paper,'We met the most serious opposition in the Ministry of Propaganda': Borders, Limits, and Summits in the German-British mountain film Der Berg ruft / The Challenge (1938)' is a fascinating look at how Anglo-German film-making took place during the increasingly fraught period of the 1930s. Read more in Jon's description below ...
In this paper I will present a reassessment of a mountaineering film released in parallel German and English-language versions at a politically fraught historical moment: Der Berg ruft, directed by Luis Trenker in 1938, and The Challenge, co-directed by Trenker and Milton Rosmer, also in 1938. By exploring their framing of a story revolving around contested borders and summits, I will reflect on their status as transnational examples of the Bergfilm (mountain film) genre. Drawing on recent archival research, I will argue that they both reflect and challenge the ideological and cultural investment in mountaineering in Germany and Britain; in particular I will consider whether Trenker's later claim to have struggled with Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda is credible. I will conclude by exploring the circumstances that allowed this co-operative production - the making of the British film, which received support from the British Alpine club and was produced for Alexander Korda's London Film by the German emigré Günther Stapenhorst from a screenplay by the Hungarian-Jewish author Emeric Pressburger, reveals the extensive and powerful networks that connected both mountaineering and the film industry in Britain and Germany in the 1930s.
Dr Jon Hughes is reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Arthur Hopcraft’s much-celebrated The Football Man (1968) comprised chapters based on interviews with representative ‘football men’ of the 1960s – ‘The Player’, ‘The Manager’, ‘The Referee’ etc. But though there is a brief chapter on ‘Football and the Press’, the ever-present match reporter receives little attention. Bryan Stanley Johnson (1933-73) is best remembered for his experimental writing, especially The Unfortunates (1969), an essentially autobiographical novel comprising a collection of unbound chapters in a box, which reflects on a day in the life of a football reporter and the random memories and thoughts that it prompts.
Johnson’s football journalism for the Observer in the mid-1960s supplies the main focus here. As a writer preoccupied with writing ‘truthfully’, he could not always resolve the tensions relating to this often highly-stylised form of journalism. Yet there was a sense in which a football match – a series of unpredictable events occurring within a time-regulated framework, provided him with a unique opportunity.
For most people, most of the time, sport is a mediated experience. The text of The Unfortunates alongside Johnson’s reports, as drafted and as they appeared in print a few hours later, allows access to this process of mediation. Johnson helps us to understand how a match report, a primary source that historians of sport often take for granted, was created.
Dilwyn Porter is Emeritus Professor of Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University and also Visiting Professor in Modern British History at Newman University, Birmingham.
This episode Geoff talks to Dr Duncan Stone about the history of English cricket. Duncan's new book, 'Different Class', examines how cricket in England has a long history of class and racial discrimination which continues to have an impact on the game today. The discussion looks at the difference in cricket culture between north and south, Duncan's own experience playing cricket growing up, and the Azeem Rafiq affair, which escalated during the final phase of writing up.
You can read more about Duncan's book here ...
https://repeaterbooks.com/product/different-class-the-untold-story-of-english-cricket/
“I have had two thrills today. One racing at Newmarket this afternoon. The other here at speedway. And this is by far the greater”. Why did speedway become so phenomenally popular in the late 1930s and 40s?
Very little historical research has been carried out on speedway racing yet it was a sport which attracted 12.5 million attendances in Britain in 1949 and regularly attracted football-sized crowds to its league meetings. The World Speedway Championship Final at Wembley in 1938 was attended by 93,000 spectators and commentary from it was broadcast by the BBC. As the sport had only been introduced into Britain in 1928, its rate of growth was spectacular.
Making use of newspapers, the speedway press and minutes of speedway’s controlling authorities at the time, this paper will examine some of the reasons why speedway became so popular in the late 1930s and 40s. It will consider its coverage in the press and broadcasting media, its reputation as a family sport, its particular appeal to women and to working people, its affinity with ideas of modernity and the inherent excitement of the sport.
Barbara Horley is a PhD student at ICSHC at De Montfort University
Aaron Ó Maonaigh is an independent scholar and post-primary teacher in South Dubllin, Ireland.
Today's interview focuses on Aaron's latest article in Soccer and Society: ‘In the Ráth Camp, rugby or soccer would not have been tolerated by the prisoners’: Irish Civil War attitudes to sport, 1922-3. Find the article at -https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2021.1988304?casa_token=FvDtYzClpdwAAAAA%3A3-FltgfMwCDyA3HlEYVdT4PVduGiv3L5wpfhh_79z2UUNk2MFHRL2g1MPi0KdEb7ulZEXOhkc_EsVw
Other articles of interest include: Ó Maonaigh, Aaron. "‘Who were the Shoneens?’: Irish militant nationalists and association football, 1913–1923." Soccer & Society 18.5-6 (2017): 631-647, which you can find here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2016.1230339?casa_token=bxlpWFQexF4AAAAA%3AL32qfv9rTGp9s7sTXf9dg6obfF0zzpy_9H-HMmC4hqiny0G5h6lyUmPMEcWRolrKJAlR4QmePBcIxw
Aaron can be reached at: aaron.omaonaigh2@mail.dcu.ie
John Fisher retired from the University of Newcastle in 2004 (from the Department of Economics, since defunct). He has written and published extensively on aspects of English and Australian rural and veterinary history. His most recent previous article is on Richard Cheslyn's father in the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society in 2020.
Article Discussed: Fisher, John. "Cricket and social status in the early nineteenth century: the career of Richard Cheslyn 1797–1858." Sport in History (2021): 1-24.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17460263.2021.1973547
Jorge Tovar is an associate professor at the Economics Department in Los Andes University (Bogota - Colombia). He holds a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley, specializing in International Trade and Industrial Organization. In addition, he has worked in sports economics and history for over six years, focusing on football and publishing various articles and books on the topic in recognized journals and editorial companies.
Tovar, J. (2021). Soccer, World War II and coronavirus: A comparative analysis of how the sport shut down. Soccer & Society, 22(1-2), 66-74. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2020.1755270
Tovar, J., On Fairness, Justice, and VAR: Russia 2018 and France 2019 World Cups in a Historical Perspective. Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-84814-9
This episode it's Heather Dichter's paper at the BSSH/IHR Sport & Leisure seminar series from December 2021.
The appearance of the Berlin Wall on the morning of August 13, 1961 immediately halted free travel in and out of Berlin, and it also had an immediately impact within sport. East and West German sporting relations came to a halt. More broadly, though, the travel restrictions imposed by NATO on East Germans in response to the Berlin Wall included athletes representing East German national teams. World and European championships in numerous sports felt the impact of these travel restrictions, prompting international sport federations to demand governments provide guarantees for athletes and teams to travel freely.
Dr. Heather L. Dichter is an associate professor of sport management and sport history at De Montfort University and a member of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. She has co-edited with Andrew Johns Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft and International Relations since 1945 (Kentucky, 2014) and edited Soccer Diplomacy: International Relations and Football since 1914 (Kentucky, 2020), which was a finalist for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Anthology Award and the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Football Book of the Year (in conjunction with the Football Writers’ Association). Her monograph, Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO, has just been published by the University of Massachusetts Press in their Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond series.
This episode Malcolm MacLean of University of Queensland/DMU/University of Gibraltar gives a paper on rugby in Aoteoroa/New Zealand and the multiple meanings of the Haka.
Recent historiographic trends that admit the voices, both schol-arly and archival, of Empire’s Others alongside emerging post- and de-colonial praxis are prompting a significant rethinking of the dynamics of colonial sport. Even so, there remains a failure to recognise the historical agency of Indigenous peoples in set-tler colonialism, linked to the extinguishment of Indigenous dis-tinctiveness, ways of knowing and ways of being in settler colo-nial states.
One of sport’s key roles in Indigenous persistence in settlement colonies is when it becomes a site of the sustenance of Indige-neity. A pre-match haka is widely recognised as a marker of New Zealand rugby, notably by the men’s national representative team. The high profile of the contemporary All Black haka over-shadows its fraught, ambivalent presence through much of the 20th century. That profile and methodological blindness result-ing from visons of sport grounded in a colonial matrix of power obscure a more banal Maori engagement with haka in rugby. This paper explores haka and sport as a site of Maori kin group maintenance as contested and complex sites and practices that are explored through evidence derived from literary and visual sources.
It's the turbulent history of cricket and society in South Africa in this episode of the Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. This week Geoff talks to the cricket historian and previous podcast guest Dr Richard Parry.
Rich - as he's known to friends - talks at a live event about his latest book, 'Too Black to Wear Whites', which is a pioneering biography of the black fast bowler Krom Hendricks. In his day Hendricks was the best bowler in the world but never got the chance to play cricket for his country due to the racist colonial government then operating in South Africa. The event was kindly hosted by the London bookshop All Good Bookshop with Jawaid Luqwani acting as host.
https://allgoodbookshop.co.uk
https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/too-black-wear-whites
Dr Richard Parry left South Africa during his student years in the 1970s as a conscientious objector against the racist apartheid state and completed a Masters at Queen’s University, Canada which examined the role of Cecil Rhodes in the development of a segregated society on the Cape. His subsequent PhD at Queen’s examined black worker resistance to colonial power in Rhodesia. While working as a civil servant in the UK and for the OECD in Paris he has continued to write history which combines his love of cricket with his established interest in the resistance to colonialism in Africa.
This episode Katy talks to Lauren Beatty about her PhD research into women's golf in Scotland. Women have been playing golf at club level in Scotland since 1867, yet despite this we know very little about their personal experiences of do-ing so. They also talk about the process of beginning a PhD and the challenges of conducting research during the pandemic.
Lauren Beatty is a second year Collaborative Doctorate Partnership PhD student, based in Scotland, working in collaboration with Glasgow Cale-donian University and the British Golf Museum. My PhD research ex-plores women’s personal experiences of playing golf at club lev-el in Scotland c.1945-1995, from a gender, class and life-cycle perspec-tive.
Iain Adams gives a paper on the origins and development of Tug of War comeptitions in late 19th and early 20th Century America. Tug of War took a particular course in college sports which saw accusations of dangerous practice in the press!
This episode Katie talks to Dr Sarah Hardstaff about children's books and football fiction.
Sarah was awarded her PhD in 2020 by the University of Cambridge. Her thesis, 'Hidden Economies in the Novels of Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voigt' compared the authors’ representation of character agency in the context of economic activity. Sarah is currently working in publishing and in her spare time is working on identity, representation, and coming-of-age in football fiction for children.
Article Reference:
Riseman, Noah. "A history of transgender women in Australian Sports, 1976–2017." Sport in History (2021): 1-28.
Caroline Layt
Caroline’s a Trans Woman who advocates for Transgender people in sports and wider society, as she was bullied and had her own rights questioned when she played women’s [club and representative] rugby union and rugby league in the early 2000s.
Despite prejudices she experienced when she was outed in 2005, she had positive people support her and she still managed to eke out a good career and represent NSW in Women’s State of Origin in 2007-08 and win four Rugby Australia National Championships as a member of Sydney First XV 2004-05 and 2007-08.
In 2004 she was nominated as one of six finalists for the prestigious Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Rugby Player of the Year Awards prior to her being outed as Transgender to all and sundry by her representative coach the following year.
Caroline’s a former Personal Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor and she’s now a Freelance Journalist who recently produced an award winning documentary. Her other sport is track and field and she's won 4 silver and 2 bronze medals [sprint relays and throws] at World Masters Athletics Championships and World Masters Games she’s competed in overseas and in Australia.
https://universalcinema.ca/review-is-this-queensland-in-the-20s/
https://universalcinema.ca/is-this-queensland-in-the-20s-caroline-layt/
https://thewomensgame.com/author/caroline-layt-1203054
https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/national-news/aged-care-equality/168555
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/playing-experience-a-missing-piece-in-transgender-players-debate-20200819-p55nac.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxlUqWW6SE&t=10s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSIP2haDjk&t=1s
Noah Riseman
Noah Riseman is a professor of history at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, where he specialises in Australian histories of gender, sexuality and race. He has recently completed a project on the history of LGBTIQ+ people in the Australian Defence Force and has also done research on the history of Indigenous Australians in the armed forces. This podcast and the Sport in History article derive from his current project researching the history of transgender people in Australia. Listeners interested in that broader topic may wish to read this report Noah recently authored on Victoria's transgender history: Victoria's Transgender History Report | TGV.
Some of the publications Noah mentioned in the podcast which may be of interest are:
Noah Riseman. "Representing Transgender in the 1970s Australian Media." Gender and History 33, no. 1 (2021): 227-248.
Noah Riseman. "Transgender Inclusion and Australia's Failed Sexuality Discrimination Bill." Australian Journal of Politics and History 62, no. 2 (June 2019): 259-277.
Benjamin Law. Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal. Quarterly Essay 67. Carlton, VIC: Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd, 2017.
This episode Geoff talks to the distinguished historian Ramachandra Guha, the recipient of the 2021 British Society of Sports History and Cricket Society Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship.
Ram talks enthusiastically about his lifetime love of cricket and his career as a historian of the game, as well as being the biographer of Gandhi and working on the history of the environment.
The Day 2 Keynote of Documenting the Olympics and Paralympics with Prof Martin Polley of De Montfort University talking us through a career of archival research in a varied and entertaining account.
Professor Martin Polley (De Montfort University)
From Wandsworth to Woodhorn via Wenlock, and points in between: an Olympic and Paralympic research journey, 1987-2021
Chair: Dr Raf Nicholson (Bournemouth University)
Documenting the Olympics and Paralympics Day 2
The first session of day 2 has three archivists from the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector talking about their collections and the broad range of objects and papers that are available for researchers of sport history.
GLAM Sector Panel – chaired by Ian Cooke (British Library) Katharine Short (De Montfort University Special Collections) Dr Elaine Penn (University of Westminster Archives) Vicky Hope-Walker (Paralympic Heritage)
The second session from the 2021 online conference Documenting the Olympics and Paralympics, which took place on 6th and 7th July 2021 and was organised by the British Library in conjunction with the British Society of Sports History (BSSH), International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC) at De Montfort University, and the School of Advanced Study/CLEOPATRA project.
In this panel the speakers talk about their research on the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and how archival material is collected, stored and utilised by the public and researchers.
GLAM Sector Panel 1 Chair: Dr Raf Nicholson (Bournemouth University) Dr Andrew Rackley (British Library) Caio Mello (British Library & School of Advanced Study/CLEOPATRA)
The first session from the 2021 online conference Documenting the Olympics and Paralympics, which took place on 6th and 7th July 2021 and was organised by the British Library in conjunction with the British Society of Sports History (BSSH), International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC) at De Montfort University, and the School of Advanced Study/CLEOPATRA project.
In this panel the event is introduced by Ian Cooke of the British Library before we have three speakers talking about their experience of archival research in Paralympic and Olympic events.
The panel discuss a broad mix of physical, digitised and born-digital resources relating to the Olympics and Paralympics, as well as how these collections have been used by researchers.
Research Panel - chaired by Dr Heather Dichter (De Montfort University)
Luke Harris (University of Birmingham) Ian Brittain (Coventry University) Niki Koutrou (Bournemouth University) & Geoff Kohe (University of Kent)
Alan McDougall is Professor of History at the University of Guelph. He has previously published on global football history as well as football in East Germany. He is currently working on a history of Liverpool Football Club. His conversation with Conor in this episode focused on his latest Sport in History article on Bill Shankly's Retirement.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17460263.2021.1931420
This episode Sam Brady of Glasgow University gives a paper for the BSSH Sport & Leisure History seminar on sporting wheelchairs and adaptive technology in the Paralympics.
Building on his own bank of oral history interviews with practitioners he explains the way in which wheelchair users increasingly became involved in the design of their equipment and how technological change affects the way in which Paralympic sports adapt over time.
You can find out more about Sam's research via his blog posts at www.paralympicheritage.org.uk or by following him on Twitter @SamB24
Dr Alexander Jackson is a curator at the National Football Museum, Manchester, England. He has written for The Blizzard, Soccer History and Playing Pasts and has a particular interest in early to mid-twentieth century football history. He has written, Football’s Great War: Association Football on the English Home Front, 1914-1918, due for publication in Spring 2022.
Andy Carter is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University. He previously studied at Bangor University and Royal Holloway, University of London. Andy is also the author of Beyond the Pale, a study of early Black and Asian cricketers in Britain.
This podcast Geoff talks to Ian Cooke about a free Zoom event on the 6th & 7th July 2021 with a range of speakers talking about archives and the history of the Olympics and Paralympics.
Go tohttps://www.bl.uk/events/documenting-the-olympics-paralympics to find out more and register for the event.
Ian also talks about the UK Web Archive and the British Library's Sport and Society project that collected material relating to the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and you can access that website by following this link https://www.bl.uk/events/documenting-the-olympics-paralympics
Julien Clenet is a final year PhD Student at University College Dublin. He researches the history of sport in Dublin, Ireland in the nineteenth-century. This is the first study of its kind for Dublin and marks Julien's work as a novel addition to Irish sport history.
Here Julien and Conor discuss some of Julien's major findings, where he found his sources and the difficulties he faced.
In this episode Geoff Swallow gives a paper on Swimming History for the Sport & Leisure History seminar series hosted by the British Society of Sports History in association with the Institute of Historical.
Geoff explores the material and representational spaces and meanings of the 1901 Jarvis-Nuttall swimming ‘match’ created by the press in which the two fastest swimmers went head to head in a very unusual simultaneous contest.
Geoff also explores the grey areas around amateurism and professionalism in the late Victorian era, as well as describing the increasing internationalisation of swimming competitions.
Craig Greenham talks to Conor Heffernan about his recent article on the Pete Rose betting scandal and how it was discussed by the American press.
Dr. Greenham is Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. Sport was not only a childhood passion but also a professional calling for Dr. Greenham. Before joining the academic ranks, he was a sports journalist. While covering sports, Dr. Greenham’s interest in the history that shaped and provided meaning to current events as well as the underlying sociocultural layers of athletics prompted a shift in career toward deeper scholarly inquiry. The primary focus of Dr. Greenham’s research is North American professional sports – particularly baseball, hockey and Canadian football.
This episode Katie talks to Dave Smith about the University of Huddersfield archive. Trekkers will be excited about their Patrick Stewart collection but sports fans will also love their national collections for Rugby League and Netball history.
Katie and Dave talk about how researchers can use the archives in their own research, as well as the opportunity to engage in public history by using the facilities at Heritage Quay to stage events and exhibitions.
Dave Smith is the public engagement officer at Heritage Quay, the information, records management and archive service at the University of Huddersfield. The archives are home to, amongst other collections, ones dedicated to Rugby League and Netball.
To see Dave's 'Big Curvy Wall' go to https://heritagequay.org
Dave Smith is the public engagement officer at Heritage Quay, the information, records management and archive service at the University of Huddersfield. The archives are home to, amongst other collections, ones dedicated to Rugby League and Netball.
Katie talks to Barbara Horley about the Speedway's boom time from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Barbara is a doctoral candidate at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. Barbara previously taught Philosophy and Religious Studies before deciding to pursue her PhD. Her research involves looking at speedway from its British inception in 1928 through to 1965 when the British League was formed, with a particular focus on the Midlands. Having watched speedway with her father and uncle from an early age, speedway had always been a passion and the opportunity to study it during its heyday in the late 1930s and 40s was obviously appealing. Barbara is also a qualified speedway referee and this has taken her all over the country refereeing in speedway’s three leagues.
This episode Katie talks to Margaret Roberts, the editor of the online magazine Playing Pasts. The magazine publishes 2 articles per week and gets 30,000 reads per month and so is a fantastic way for researchers to get their work into a public forum in a less formal and time-consuming way than publishing in an academic journal.
The British Society of Sports History is now working in partnership with Playing Pasts to have a dedicated section of the website for its members' to publish their writing and the Society wants to encourage people at all stages of their career to take advantage of this opportunity.
You can access Playing Pasts at https://www.playingpasts.co.uk or follow @playing_pasts to keep up to date on what is being published.
Margaret Roberts is the Editor in Chief of Playing Pasts, the online magazine for Sport and Leisure History. Playing Pasts was established in 2016 and has a global readership.
Linda M. Perkins is Associate University Professor and director of Applied Gender Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She holds an interdisciplinary university appointment in the departments of Applied Gender Studies, Educational Studies, and History. Her primary areas of research are on the history of African-American women’s higher education, the education of African Americans in elite institutions, and the history of talent identification programs for African-American students.
Emily Ankers talks to Katie about her research on women's experience of rock climbing from both a historical and sociological point of view.
Emily is a postgraduate researcher, having completed her Masters by Research in 2020 titled 'Everyday' Women's Experiences of Rock Climbing (1970-2020) at Leeds Beckett University. Her research investigated how women's experiences of climbing have changed over time. She is now in the process of applying for a PhD to build on her findings.
She is also Co-Founder and Editor of Beta Magazine, an outdoors and climbing magazine focused on the female experience but inclusive of all and Co-Network Coordinator of the Women in Climbing and Mountaineering (WiCaM) Network. Their aim is to connect researchers, industry professionals and anyone who has an interest.
New podcast host Katie Taylor talks to Dr Verity Postlethwaite about her research on London 2012, researching in Japan in preparation for the Paralympics and Olympics and researching during the pandemic.
Katie also tells us about the new BSSH PG/ECR Facebook group and a special pandemic grant available for researchers affected by the pandemic.
Dr Verity Postlethwaite is an independent researcher based in the United Kingdom who works between academic and industry contracts. Verity's research explores relationships between sport and society in national and international contexts. Recent projects have involved sports diplomacy and the Commonwealth, sport and equality in Scotland and a Lawn Tennis Association governance review of County and Island Associations in England.
Shannon Walsh is an Associate Professor of Theatre History at LSU where she also serves as Co-Head of the PhD in Theatre. She received her MA from Florida State, and her PhD from the University of Minnesota. As a theatre practitioner she has worked as a dramaturg and a development manager.
She has published in Theatre Annual and Theatre Journal and has recently published two books - Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era and the edited works Sporting Performance: Politics in Play
Lasse is Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. His research interests include media studies, game studies, esport, play theory and phenomenology among other topics. The purpose of the present conversation was to discuss Lasse's latest article - The Play of Champions: Toward a Theory of Skill in eSport." Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2020): 1-23.
This week Geoff talks to two guests, Prof Matt Taylor and Dr Raf Nicholson, who have co-authored an article for the latest issue of the Society’s journal, Sport in History, 'Women, sport and the people’s war in Britain, 1939–45'.
Geoff also catches up with Richard Boddie to talk about the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize which is awarded each year by the Society to recognise excellence in sport history.
To access the journal article go to https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460263.2020.1824939
Matthew Taylor is Professor of History in the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, where he is one of our foremost sports historians with numerous publications on the history of association football in particular. His latest book is Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-45, which was published by Routledge in 2020 and is available in all good bookshops.
Dr Raf Nicholson of Bournemouth University is a longtime friend and presenter of the podcast and current chair of the BSSH, who specialises in women's sports history. Her most recent book is Ladies at Lord’s: A History of Women’s Cricket in Britain, which was published by Peter Lang in 2019 and short-listed for the Lord Aberdare Prize in 2020.
Welcome to the Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sports History in association with the Institute of Historical Research.
This episode Geoff talks to Katie Taylor about the history of women's American football which has its roots right back in the late nineteenth century. Katie describes how pioneering female college students took up the game and adapted it to their own style of play in the 1880s and 1890s. She also looks at the phenomenon of West Coast Women's football in the 1890s with the attempt to set up a commercial league with mostly working class players.
Katie also talks about the challenge of completing a PhD during lockdown as well as discussing her role as the BSSH's Postgrad and Early Career rep.
Katie Taylor is currently a doctoral student at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, focusing on the history of female American football players. She is also a teacher at Peter Symonds Sixth Form College in Winchester where she specialises in the socio-cultural aspects of sport. Katie is a qualified American football coach and previously managed the Great Britain men’s Flag Football Team.
You can find Katie's paper on women's American football at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsih20/current
Details of Katie's seminar at the IHR, as well as all the seminars in the BSSH's seminar series can be found here https://www.history.ac.uk/events/first-female-football-coach-a-history-female-american-football-coaches
This episode Geoff is joined by the co-editors of a special isssue of the BSSH's journal Sport in History on women's sport. Fiona and Carol talk about the state of research into women's sport now, and how it has developed since their previous special issue on the subject in 2010.
They also give us a sneak preview of some of the articles that they have gathered together, including a ground-breaking collaboration between previous podcast guests Prof Matt Taylor and Dr Raf Nicholson on women's sport and leisure during World War 2.
It's a feisty discussion with a lot of passion for the subject shown from all sides! You can access the latest special issue of Sport in History on women's sport with the introduction to the special issue free here, as well as the 2010 issue here. And look up Playing Pasts here for more on the relationship between academic history and sports history collections and enthusiasts.
This episode Conor Heffernan talks to Conor Murray about sport in Ireland in the twentieth century and the way in which the histories of soccer and rugby are entwined with political developments on the island of Ireland.
How and why did soccer and rugby develop in such contrasting ways? And what effect did the troubled relationship between Britain and Ireland have on crowd behaviour north and south of the border?
Conor Murray is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar at the School of History and Geography at DCU. Conor is currently working on an all-island study of Irish football and rugby during the course of the twentieth-century. In the past, Conor has published work on sport and identity in Northern Ireland and, aside from his doctoral work, is currently working on a short history of hockey in Ireland. Additionally, has published several articles on RTE brainstorm on various aspects of sport, society and politics in Ireland. He can be reached at the following
conor.murray79@mail.dcu.ie
@minto91
https://www.rte.ie/author/1008969-conor-murray
And we're back! After a break following the British Society of Sports History's virtual Conference the Sport in History podcast returns with an interview with Professor Dilwyn Porter of De Montfort University, who talks about his latest book, English Gentlemen and World Soccer: Corinthians, Amateurism and the Global Game which he has co-authored with Dr Chris Bolsmann. He talks about the Corinthians, an amateur club whose reputation has been inflated over the years to epitomise the spirit of amateurism that informed the thinking of the English middle class sporting élite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We chat about the extent to which the club's reputation has been manipulated by club historians and also the way in which the Corinthians' overseas tours fitted into a developing sporting globalisation in the Edwardian era and beyond.
There's also time to talk about Dil's work on the BSSH's own history, developing its archive in conjunction with De Montfort and anticipating the celebration of the Society's 40th anniversary in 2021
Dilwyn Porter is Professor of Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University where he teaches on their MA on Sports History and Culture as well as the International MA in the Humanities, Management and Law of Sport. He’s a former editor of the BSSH’s journal Sport in History and was recently co-opted onto the board of the BSSH and has provided the voice of experience in this difficult year.
Prof Porter has published numerous works including studies of Cornish identity and sport, as well as a number of pieces on the history of amateur sport, which he has been working on for his latest publication, English Gentlemen and World Soccer: Corinthians, Amateurism and the Global Game, which he co-authored with Dr Chris Bolsmann.
The final podcast from the BSSH 2020 Conference with a round table discussion on the future of Sports History. On the panel are Dr Christienna Fryar of Goldsmiths, University of London, Dr Geoff Levett, editor of the Sport in History podcast, Dr Carol Osborne of Sporting Heritage and Prof Kay Schiller, the Editor-in-Chief of the BSSH’s journal Sport in History.
The four panellists give brief opening remarks on future directions for research areas in British sports history, as well as thinking through how historians of sport can use new methodologies, and develop partnerships to increase their reach among the wider public.
The greater part of the session is then handed over to the delegates to make comments on the panellists’ presentations and discuss their own ideas on the position of Sports History now and reflect on how we can advance the cause of our discipline within the academy.
Sporting Inequalities is the subject of the fifth instalment from the BSSH 2020 Conference with a panel chaired by Dr Lisa Taylor which features three young researchers looking into women’s sport, representations of women in manga, and disability sport.
In Women’s Rugby: the relationship between women’s sport and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain Lydia Furse of De Montfort University provokes a debate about the nature of feminism and the complex interaction between researcher and subject when using oral history.
Tom Weir, also of De Montfort University, in Disability Sport, opens with a thought-provoking question to the audience before going on to discuss his research with practitioners of sport with intellectual disabilities, and the way in which sport can integrate people into or exclude them from so-called mainstream sport and by extension wider society.
Dr Yann Descamps, of Université de Franche-Comté, in From Olympic Win to Olympic Dreams? Attacker You!, the Olympics and Women’s Sports from Japan to France looks at the way in which portrayals of female athletes in manga reflect the construction of gender ideals in Japanese society, and how this changes in the translation of manga from a Japanese to a French context.
It’s the keynote in the fourth instalment from the BSSH 2020 Conference as we hear previous podcast guest Dr Prashant Kidambi deliver a wide-ranging Sir Derek Birley Memorial lecture on the writing of sports history. Informed by CLR James’s classic text Beyond the Boundary Prashant discusses the boundary in sports history – both as a literal dividing line and as a metaphor for ways of thinking about sport’s relationship to wider events.
He questions how the history of sport is premised on looking beyond the boundary to the world outside, which he argues leads practitioners into a neglect – wilful or absent-minded – of the events that happen on the field of play itself compared to popular writers. He also argues that the boundary needs to be considered as a temporal device as well as spatial. We need to think about how we divide up events in sport and the effect this has on the narratives and analysis that we construct around sport and its relationship to society.
Stick around for a lively Q&A with BSSH members thinking through Prashant’s ideas and sometimes questioning them.
We also hear the Society’s Chair, Raf Nicholson, announce the 2020 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize winner – the most prestigious award for academic sports history in the UK. But if you want to dive straight in to Prashant’s lecture it begins at around the 7m 30s mark.
The Writing of HIstory is the subject of the third panel from the BSSH’s 2020 Conference, chaired by Dr Nick Piercey, with a wide ranging discussion between scholars researching in a variety of fields.
In A ‘better attendance than usual’: Deconstructing the History of Sport and Recreation at Port Sunlight Samuel Clevenger of Towson University questions the benevolence of model communities and whether workers engaged in organised recreation as much as is assumed by conventional narratives.
Dr Alex Jackson, in The uses of nostalgia and reminiscence in English football writing during WW1, interrogates the way in which nostalgia and ‘reminuisance’ (!) is a phenomenon of times of crisis, including our own.
Sarah Hardstaff of the University of Cambridge looks at Identity, Representation and Coming-of-Age in Football Fiction for Children and the way in which representations of footballers influenced, and influences, who can be conceived of as footballers in the public imagination.
Boxing history in the second in a series of podcasts brought to you from the BSSH’s 2020 Conference, which was held online in the last week of August.
The session is introduced by Matt McDowell of the University of Edinburgh and features Ben Duncan-Jones (De Montfort University) with a paper titled, ‘[T]he advantage of science, and of the affinity which exists between the natural and the artificial weapon.’ Digital methods and nineteenth century boxing.
Ben has used quantitative digital techniques to do a comprehensive analysis of boxing journalism in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Journal, a key resource for nineteenth century boxing history. In this paper he outlines the way in which he used his methodology and how it can be applied to other similar research projects.
The second paper is given by Marjolein van Bavel of Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, National Autonomous University of Mexico & Department of History, University of Antwerp titled The Boxing Commission knocked out cold: Ending the prohibition of women’s boxing in Mexico City in the 1990s.
Marjolein outlines a hard fought process by which women, led by Laura Serrano, campaigned to overturn a ban on female boxing which had been introduced in 1946.
Both papers feature excellent Q&A sessions with a wide ranging discussion between the presenters and delegates.
This is the first in a series of podcasts brought to you from the BSSH’s 2020 Conference, which was held online in the last week of August.
The first panel is introduced by BSSH Chair Dr Raf Nicholson and chaired by Dr Conor Heffernan and features two papers by leading British sports historians, Professor Martin Polley of De Montfort University and Dr Luke Harris of the University of Birmingham talking about sport in Edwardian England.
Martin talks about C.R. Ashbee, the Arts & Crafts Movement, and Sport in the Cotswolds, 1902-1908. He highlights the way in which sport and recreation were central to Ashbee’s thinking about constructing a model community in Chipping Camden, and talks about the practical ways in which his ideas were implemented.
Luke discusses the career of the Edwardian runner Jack Price and his turn to professionalism in the 1900s. Price’s career illustrates the development of running as a professional career in the 1900s and Price’s role as one of the key athletes and trainers of his era.
Cricket this week with Nigel Hancock, who is the Chair of the Cricket Society. Nigel is the Chair of the Cricket Society, a well-regarded member organisation that exists to promote cricket in all its spheres – that is listening, reading, watching and playing. In particular, it has a regularly published Journal and bulletin; puts on live meetings with cricketers and the people who write about them; makes awards; runs Lunches and other events; and has its own cricket team.
Nigel talked to me about an exciting new initiative which will bring together the BSSH and the Cricket Society, as well as more generally about the Cricket Society and the benefits that it offers its members. I should offer full disclosure that I was recently brought on to the Executive of the Society as committee secretary so this is by no means the first time that Nigel and I had met.
There’s talk about both the BSSH’s and the Cricket Society’s 2020 book awards, the shortlists of which have been recently announced. And we also discuss a new award, the Howard Milton Award, which will be jointly run the the BSSH and CS to reward a cricket writer or organisation who has made a significant contribution to cricket history.
Nigel also talks about his own research into cricket crowds which he undertook at De Montfort University. The Cricket Society has a number of live events that would be of interest to both researchers in sports history and the general cricketing public.
The Cricket Society, which is celebrating its 75th Anniversary in 2020, exists to promote cricket in all its spheres – listening, reading, watching and playing. In particular, it has a regularly published Journal and bulletin; puts on live meetings with cricketers and the people who write about them; makes awards; runs Lunches and other events; and has its own cricket team.
The history of sports chaplaincy this episode with Conor Heffernan talking to Will Whitmore, who is currently completing a PhD at the University of Gloucester.
Will’s PhD focuses on the role of sports chaplains in professional sports teams in a comparative study between soccer in the UK and American sports. He describes the special role that sports chaplains in the UK play in clubs’ relationships with their fans and contrasts this with the close relationship that the chaplaincy has with NFL teams, whose rituals of pre-match worship date back to the 1950s and beyond.
Will Whitmore serves as the School Minister at Mercersburg Academy, an independent, coed, secondary, boarding and day school, where he also teaches in the history and religion department. He is completing his Ph.D. at the University of Gloucestershire where his research focuses on chaplaincy in elite sports settings. He received his Masters in Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.
The history of Physical Culture with Dr Conor Heffernan of the University of Texas at Austin talking about his research into physical culture in Ireland in the twentieth century, as well as the history of weightlifting and the search for the 1000lb bench press. There’s chat about Sinn Fein’s trash-talking of the English physique in the 1900s and an insight into the use of tennis balls and tight towels in power-lifting. You can also read his article on Irish body building at the excellent Playing Pasts website.
Dr. Conor Heffernan is Assistant Professor of Physical Culture and Sport Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interest is late nineteenth and early twentieth century body cultures in Great Britain and the United States. Outside of academia, Conor also runs Physical Culture Study, a website dedicated to the history of health and fitness, and provides content for several fitness outlets.
Olympic and Paralympic History on this podcast with a recording of an online symposium sponsored jointly by the British Library, the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University and the British Society for Sports History.
The event was chaired by Dr. Raf Nicholson with four speakers talking about different aspects of researching the history of the Games.
Presentations:
Heather Dichter, De Montfort University – Finding Olympic History in Non-Sport Archives
Laura Alexandra Brown, Northumbria University – The Heritage of the Games: Interpreting urban change in Olympic host cities
Robert McNicol, Librarian, Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum – Researching the Olympics/Paralympics at Wimbledon
Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, British Library – Preserving the Olympics/Paralympics online
There were attendees from around the world who provided plenty of questions for the Q&A to round off the session.
Irish soccer history this week with Conor Heffernan talking to Dr Conor Curran, who is Dublin City Council’s official football historian. Conor talks about his ground-breaking study of sport in Donegal which was publish as The Development of Sport in Donegal, 1880-1935 in 2015. He also talks about the oral histories he conducted when writing about the experience of Irish migrant footballers in the post-War years for his Irish Soccer Migrants: A Social and Cultural History, which was published in 2017.
Conor also talks about his work for Dublin Council and his role in preparing for the city’s hosting of the 2020 (now 2021) Men’s European Championships.
Dr Conor Curran is a social historian with a specialisation in sport. He is currently Dublin City Council Football Historian. In 2019, he completed an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the School of Education at Trinity College, Dublin where he undertook a study of the history of physical education in Ireland. He has also worked as a lecturer in Irish history at Dublin City University’s Open Education Unit and has taught sports history at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester and at the University of Giessen and University of Marburg.
His Ph.D. thesis was published as The Development of Sport in Donegal, 1880-1935 by Cork University Press in 2015. In 2013 he was awarded a FIFA Havelange Research Scholarship to examine the migration of Irish footballers to Britain. This was published as Irish Soccer Migrants: a Social and Cultural History by Cork University Press in 2017. He is also co-editor of New Perspectives on Association Football in Irish History (Routledge, 2018).
Sport and the Cold War is the focus for this week’s episode with Geoff talking to Dr Heather Dichter of the International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University.
There were some technical issues on Geoff’s side but do persevere, the sound quality gets better! It was a wide-ranging discussion in which Heather talked about her latest publications, the first being an article for the International Journal of the History of Sport on the roots of corruption in the dubious practices of bid committees for the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympics.
She also talked about her editorship of a new collection on Soccer Diplomacy, in which she has a chapter on the way in which East Germany used its participation in FIFA and UEFA-organised tournaments in the 1960s to gain international recognition.
There’s also news of a virtual symposium being held on 19th June 2020 at the British Library in which Heather and other scholars will be exploring the archival resources available for researching Paralympic and Olympic History.
And there’s still time to talk to Heather about her work as review editor for the Journal of Sport History, and as an admin for H-Sport, the incredibly useful resource for sports historians, which among other things publishes a database of the latest research into sport history from around the globe.
Dr Heather Dichter teaches sport management and sport history at De Montfort University where she is part of the team at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. Her research interests are the Olympic Games, international sport, diplomacy and international relations, Germany, Europe and NATO. She has written a number of articles and chapters on the diplomacy and history of the Olympics, among other things. Dr Dichter is a valued member of many organisations working in the field of sport history and in recognition of this in 2019 she received the ISHPES Award for her work in the field.
This podcast it’s the history of black college basketball in the twentieth century with Raja Rahim, who is currently researching a PhD at the University of Florida. Her study focuses on the way in which participation in basketball gave agency to young African American men and women by using allow them to use the structure of sports organisation and participation to express themselves in the public sphere.
It’s a ground-breaking piece of work which traces the development of black coaches under the pioneering basketball coach John B. McLendon, who was the first African American head coach in any professional sport. Raja talks about the first inter-collegiate black basketball game in 1912 and traces the development of college sports through the twentieth century and the way in which basketball operated as a significant field in the struggle for civil rights.
Raja Rahim is Marilyn Yarbrough Fellow at Kenyon College and a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Florida. A native of Richmond, Virginia, she is a graduate of North Carolina Central University with Bachelor and Master’s degrees in History. As a United States historian, her research and pedagogy focuses include African American history, gender studies, sports history, oral history and digital humanities. Rahim’s current research examines the political, cultural, and social worlds of basketball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Twitter: @RajaMalikahR
The history of international cricket in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Geoff talking to Allister Webb about Yorkshire and Glamorgan County Cricket Clubs.
This episode was recorded in lieu of Allister giving his paper at the Sport & Leisure History Seminar at the IHR, which of course was cancelled due to the coronavirus. It was the first time wrestling with video conferencing for the podcast for those of us this side of the Atlantic so please bear with the occasional techncial blips.
And Allister proved prescient on the prospects for the Olympics and cricket this summer!
Allister is a part-time PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, researching public attitudes towards the staging of contemporary sports events in relation to cricket, and he previously completed an MA in Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University.
The title of Allister’s paper was ‘Why history matters in contemporary sporting events: A case study of the bidding process for international cricket matches in England and Wales.’ If you’d like to hear Allister give his paper we’ll be rescheduling the seminar for the next academic year when all being well the pandemic will have passed.
The history of sport and Hungary in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Dr. Johanna Mellis of Ursinus College in the United States.
Conor talks to Johanna about her work on the relationship between sport and politics in Hungary during the Cold War and how defectors were viewed by those who remained loyal to the Communist régime. Johanna also talks about the challenges of conduction oral history in a second language and her teaching of sport history at a college where approaching 40% of the students are athletes.
Dr. Johanna Mellis is an Assistant Professor of History at Ursinus College near Philadelphia, PA where she teaches courses in world/global history, European history, and sport and oral history. She received her PhD in History at the University of Florida in 2018, where she worked with the prestigious Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (https://oral.history.ufl.edu). Her research connects the history of Hungarian sport to the global arena of international sport during the Cold War by using oral histories to show how Hungarian athletes shaped not only their lives under the socialist system, but also the worldwide governance of the International Olympic Committee. Her first article, “Cold War Politics and the California Running Scene,” is based on her collaborative oral history project with Dr. Toby Rider, titled “The Cold War Athlete-Refugee in CA Oral History Project.” It is the subject of her second project about the experiences and politics of sporting defectors from the Eastern Bloc to the West in the Cold War (http://bit.ly/2QVUleQ). In her most recent article, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” she analyzes how the momentous events of 1956 in Hungary influenced athletes and socialist sport leaders alike to cooperate with—and not work against—one another, in order to achieve their own goals from the 1960s-1980s (http://bit.ly/2QpNb3W). She is also starting to work on a collaborative oral history project with Dr. Emese Ivan of St. John’s University. The first of its kind in studies about Eastern Bloc sport, the project will consist of interviews with a women’s basketball team who trained at Hungary’s Central Sport School in the 1970s. Dr. Mellis can be found on Twitter @JohannaMellis
Sport and art again in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Geoff talking to Veronica Smith of the University of York.
Geoff talks to Veronica about the stained glass in the beautiful Victoria Baths in Manchester. Those of us of a certain age will remember the baths featuring in the BBC’s television show Restoration in the 1990s. Veronica’s research looks at the gender and class hierarchies embodied in the glasswork and puts them into the context of wider Edwardian society.
There’s also time to talk about the hard slog of researching stained glass in pubs and a quick plug for how friendly the BSSH’s conference is!
Raf also fills us in on the upcoming seminars from the BSSH featuring sport in Ireland with Dr Liam Callaghan and the Cricket World Cup with Allister Webb.
Veronica Smith is currently studying for a PhD in History of Art, exploring the pivotal role of stained glass in municipal and domestic architecture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in British cities. She has previously published work on stained glass firms of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Sport and modernism in art in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Geoff talking to Dr Bernard Vere of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Geoff talks to Bernard about the relationship between sport and modernist art and architecture in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century in a wide-ranging discussion that takes in Robert Delanunay’s landmark work, The Cardiff Team, the battle of styles between tennis champions Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills, fascist architecture and Darlington’s (much-lamented) Feethams ground.
They also cover British Modernism with a discussion of David Bomberg’s work Jui Jitsu, currently (Jan 2020) on display at the National Gallery in London.
Dr Bernard Vere is the author of Sport and Modernism in the Visual Arts in Europe, 1909–1949 (Manchester University Press, 2018). He is Programme Director of the MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. He has also written the essays ‘Pedal-Powered Avant-Gardes: Cycling Paintings in 1912–1913’ (International Journal of the History of Sport, 2011), ‘BLAST SPORT: Vorticism, Sport and William Roberts’s Boxers’ (Modernism/ Modernity, 2017) and ‘A “Modern Rendezvous” in London: Painters, Pilots, and Edward Wadsworth’s A Short Flight (1914)’ (British Art Studies, 2017). He is currently working on an essay looking at ‘The Young Man’s Home’, a 1935 collaboration between Fernand Léger, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and René Herbst, to be included in the collection Sport and the European Avant-Garde, 1900–1945 (eds. Przemyslaw Strozek and Andreas Kramer, forthcoming from Brill).
Women’s rugby in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Raf talking to Lydia Furse, who gave a paper at the seminar series in 2019, which featured as our first ever podcast episode.
Lydia’s PhD is a pioneering work on the development of women’s rugby from its origins in late Victorian Britain through its transformation into the modern game in the 1970s and 1980s. Raf and Lydia talk about the difficulties and opportunities of using personal testimonies and interviews in investigating the intersection between the personal and the political in the context of overturning a century of accumulated prejudice against the participation of women in what has been perceived as the most masculine of sports in the British World.
They also talk more generally about developments in women’s history and the changing nature of feminism and its relationship to women’s participation in sport.
And Lydia’s work has had a major public impact already with her research feeding into the way in which the World Rugby Museum at Twickenham has updated its displays to integrate women’s rugby into the history of the game. Finally there’s a discussion of the perils of peer review and Raf plugs the Society’s grants available to postgrads and postdocs.
Lydia Furse is a PhD candidate at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University working in collaboration with the World Rugby Museum in Twickenham.
Weightlifting and sport diplomacy in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Conor talk to Sam Schelfhout of the Institute of Kinesiology at the University of Texas in Austin.
You can read Sam’s co-authored article with John Fair, ‘Lifting ‘Round the World’: The Goodwill Weightlifting Tours of 1955′ online via the International Journal of the History of Sport.
Sam Schelfhout is a Ph.D. candidate in physical culture & sport studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary research interests focus on sport and its role in United States diplomacy and international relations and the history of sport diplomacy during the Cold War. In addition, he is interested in the evolution of esports and video games and their increasing inclusivity with traditional sports in interdisciplinary sport studies. Schelfhout earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in political science and economics from the University of Portland in 2014 and a Master of Science degree in sport management from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017.
Sport and apartheid in this podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Conor talk to Tanya Jones of the Institute of Kinesiology at the University of Texas in Austin.
Tanya’s doctoral thesis examines the history of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States where she looks at the career of human rights activist and sports management academic Richard Lapchick.
Tanya talks about the complexity of researching a living subject and situating him in the historical context of the human rights struggle from the 1968 Olympics onwards and the campaign against racial discrimination in the US and South Africa. There’s some strong testimony in here about the violence of the struggle so listen on to find out more.
Tanya Jones is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin.Hher field, broadly, is sport studies, and her focus is on the intersection of race, politics, and sport. Specifically, Tanya’s research concentrates on the history of modern sport and race and its role in the formation of society. Her graduate research in the past five years has involved the history of sporting boycotts in the United States surrounding apartheid South Africa.
The history of sport and the military in this week’s podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Ryan Murtha of the University of Texas at Austin.
Conor talks to Ryan about his work on the Tlatelolco Massacre in the run up to the 1968 Mexico Olympics. They also talk a new trend in sports history – lifestyle sports; that is non-competitive sports that took off after World War Two like body-building and, wind-surfing and surfing. In particular they discuss the 60s frisbee boom, which took off through a combination of the rise of plastics intersecting with the developing counter-culture before moving on to the history of weight-lifting in the US and the role of Dave Willoughby in its sportification.
Ryan is a PhD student at The University of Texas at Austin. A Philadelphia native, Ryan studied at Villanova University before coming to Austin for graduate school. His research focuses on twentieth-century social movements and lifestyle sports. Ryan’s writing has appeared in publications like Slate and Deadspin, and more of his writing can be found online at TalkinBoutPraxis.com or @ryanhoodie
German sport history in this week’s podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Professor Kay Schiller of the University of Durham.
It was a wide-ranging discussion in the rather noisy lobby of the British Library that acts as a preview to Kay’s rescheduled paper to be given at the IHR some time in 2020.
Kay is one of the leading researchers on the history of sport in Germany in the twentieth century and we talk about his new research project into the remarkable life of Alex Natan, the ‘fastest Jew in Germany’. Natan was an élite runner whose ethnicity led him to seek refuge in Britain in the 1930s before being interned in Canada as an enemy alien on the outbreak of war.
We also talk about Kay’s award-winning book, The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, co-authored with Christopher Young, which won both the North American Society for Sport History Book Award and the Aberdare Prize from the British Society of Sports History for best sports history book published in 2010. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Sport in History, the BSSH’s journal and we talk about the recent special issues of Sport in History edited by Jean Williams on women’s football to the accompaniment of the BL’s in-house John Coltrane.
There was also time to mention Jon Hughes’s excellent paper on the German boxer Walter Neusel, and also to hear about Kay’s experience of attending the 1972 Games as a child.
Sport in China in this week’s podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Y. Andrew Hao, who is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.
And again it’s a podcast takeover this week as Andrew is interviewed by the BSSH’s Postgrad and Early Career Rep, Conor Heffernan. Andrew talks about his path into academia in the States and the role of sport in the development of Chinese foreign policy during the 1960 and 70s, as well as discussing his passion for tennis history. There’s also some great detail on the pleasures of working in the archives in China but French historians should plug their ears when talk turns to who exactly was the President of France in 1966! Andrew is a regular attendee at the BSSH’s conferences and there’s room to discuss the various grants that are available for PG and ECR researchers to help them get the most out of their Society.
Y. Andrew Hao is a Ph.D. Candidate in Physical Culture and Sport Studies at the H. J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports of the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. You can find him on Twitter @andrewrhao.
Andrew’s research interests include the (international) political history of the Olympic Movement, history of sport and international relations, history of (East) Asian sports, and history of tennis. He has conducted archival research in the United States, China, and Europe and presented at the annual conferences of NASSH and BSSH. He received the 2019 PhD Students and Early Career Academics Research Grant from the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Centre.
Andrew was born and raised in Fushun and Shenyang, China. He completed his undergraduate degree in International Relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. He moved to Austin, TX in 2013 to pursue a master’s degree in Kinesiology (Sport Management) before committing to the current Ph.D. study.
Besides academia, he is a dedicated cinephile (his favourtie film of all time is The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick), an avid tennis player, a passionate trivia contestant, and a frequent world traveler (his favourite places besides Austin in the world are Berlin, Istanbul, Lausanne, and Tallinn).
The history of sport and the military in this week’s podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Professor Gary Sheffield of the University of Wolverhampton talking about sport and the military during World War 1.
Gary is one of the UK’s leading historians of the First World War and it was a real pleasure to talk to him about the relationship between sport and pastoral care on the Western Front and Gallipoli during WW1. We also discuss how he was inspired to take an interest in history by reading a Ladybird book as a child, which was a small step on the way to academia and his first teaching post at Sandhurst Military Academy.
We also talk about two hotly contested historical issues – the necessity of Britain going to war in 1914 to defend liberal democracy in Western Europe and the hoary chestnut of whether a football match took place between British and German troops on Christmas Day 1914.
Gary is active in the Football and War Network, a network made up of historians of war with an interest in football, and football club historians. It aims to brings together historians from the academic and football worlds so that for the first time all the academic, practitioner and fan research centred around football, war and history can link up.
Professor Gary Sheffield is the co-director, with Professor Stephen Badsey, of the First World War Research Group at the University of Wolverhampton, and he specialises in the history of Britain at war in the first half of the twentieth century. He is one of the nation’s foremost historians of the First World War and was one of the historians consulted about how to commemorate the War’s centenary years from 2014. Major works include ‘Forgotten Victory: The First World War – Myths and Realities’ (Headline, 2001), ‘The Somme: A New History’ (Cassell Military Paperbacks, 2004) and ‘Douglas Haig: From Somme to Victory’ (Aurum Press, 2016). He is currently engaged on writing a book on the British and Dominion armies in the two world wars.
The history of rowing in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Alec Hurley, who is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.
And it's a podcast takeover this week as Alec is interviewed by the BSSH's Postgrad and Early Career Rep, Conor Heffernan. Alec first talks briefly about the development of sport in Britain's colonies in the nineteenth century before discussing his doctoral work on the history of rowing in Germany in the nineteenth century and its relationship to developments in Britain.
Alec Hurley is a third year PhD Student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Physical Culture and Sport Studies Program. His research focus is on the intersection of Sport and Empire, with a proposed dissertation focus on the transcultural role of sport clubs in the development of the German Empire. Alec holds previous degrees in World History, Sport Management, and Broadcast Communication. Before turning his full attention to academia he was a rowing coach for nine years at clubs and universities across the United States.
Women's soccer in Ireland in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Helena Byrne, who is Curator of the Digital Archive at the British Library.
Helena's paper discussed the development of Women's soccer in Ireland from the late nineteenth century, and in particular highlighted the boom in indoor soccer in the 1960s. Her work is part of an ongoing project that seeks to recover the history of the sport, a matter of some urgency now that the 60s generation is succumbing to old age. She also discusses the conference on 'Sidelines, touchlines and hemlines: Women in Irish Sport' that will take place in Dundlak on 28th February 2020.
With her web archivist's hat on Helena also talked about the incredible range of digital resources that she and her colleagues have been working on that will be invaluable to historians of the 21st century both now and into the future.
Helena Byrne is the Curator of Web Archives at the British Library. She was the Lead Curator on the IIPC CDG 2018 and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic collections. Helena completed her Master in Library and Information Studies at UCD in 2015. Previously she worked as an English language teacher in Turkey, South Korea and Ireland.
Sport and the military in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Beth Gaskell, who is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Greenwich where she is completing a PhD on the British Army in the nineteenth century. She has also been active in HistoryLab, the postgraduate network for historians run by the Institute of Historical Research, as well as working as a curator of newspapers at the British Library.
Beth talks about her work on the depiction of masculinity in regimental publications in the long nineteenth century and the way in which sport played an increasingly important role in the institutional memory of military institutions. She also talks more personally about juggling the demands of doing a PhD while working and being a mum, as well as the role that HistoryLab played in helping her to find her voice in academia.
Beth Gaskell's research, funded through a Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship, investigates military writing, military-media relations and the professionalisation of the British Army in the long nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the rise of the professional periodical press. She is a qualified Librarian who has undertaken project work at the Royal Astronomical Society, and has previously held posts at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the National Army Museum and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. She has won two grants from RSVP (2015 and 2016) and a Cardiff University vlogging bursary to attend BAVS 2016. Her chapter on "Bibliographic Issues: Titles, Numbers, Frequencies" appeared in Researching the Nineteenth-Century Press: Case Studies (Routledge) in July 2017. She is currently curator of newspapers at the British Library.
Sport in the Royal Dockyard in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Dr Melanie Bassett, who is a Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, where she manages the PTUC (port Towns & Urban Cultures) website.
Mel talked to Geoff about a paper she gave at the IHR that was based on her PhD research into the sport and leisure activities of civilian employees in the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth in the Edwardian period, including the incorporation of female workers during World War 1.
Mel's work means that she is very active in public history, acting as a consultant on projects at Portsmouth City Museum, as well as helping to set up other public history projects in Portsmouth, and she talks about the judgements one has to make being an academic historian working in a public history environment.
As part of this work she talks about the Portsmouth contribution to Supernatural Cities and DarkFest, whose app was going live on the day that the podcast was recorded.
Dr Melanie Bassett is a Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. She manages the PTUC website and social media outputs alongside undertaking her own research on port towns. Her PhD research, 'The Royal Dockyard Worker in Edwardian England: Culture, Leisure and Empire' re-examined the concept of a monolithic imperial identity and tracked the nuances of working-class imperialism.
UK women's sport governance in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with last week's host, Raf Nicholson, in the hot seat for the first of the BSSH's Sport in History seminars at the IHR.
Raf talked about how women's sport in a number of organisations effectively became subject to male control as a result in changes to the funding of sport more generally in the late 1980s and 1990s. She gave a fascinating account of how certain sports were able to resist giving up female control while others faced a choice between bankruptcy or the acceptance of being consumed by their male counterparts.
The history of replica football kits in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Geoff talks to Dr Chris Stride of the University of Sheffield about the history of the replica kit from its inception in the 70s as a child's plaything to the 90s replica boom when all of a sudden even your Dad thought it was ok to wear a football shirt to the ground.
Geoff manages to nail the tricky 'statistician' in the intro before stumbling over the relatively easy 'analysis' but fortunately Chris talks lucidly about how the rehabilitation of football's reputation began before the two epochal moments of Italia '90 and the formation of the English Premier League. Replica kits and their embrace by a new kind of left-leaning football fans was part of the process whereby football became the coolest sport of the Cool Britannia age.
Chris also talks about another history project of his on sporting statues, where the public can help to build up his database of statues around the world. Tune in to hear about the curious Cold War backstory of Chris's favourite statue in Leipzig - go to the project's website to see this extraordinary piece of art.
Dr Chris Stride is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Sheffield but in addition to his work as a statistician he has a number of on-going projects on the history of sport, including an analysis of cheating in sport and a major study of sporting statues.
The history of polo in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Geoff talks to postgraduate researcher Luise Elsaesser of the European Institute University about her prize-winning paper on the development of polo in the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Luise's paper challenged Saidian views of the Orientalising process and British imperialism, and highlighted the way in which polo allowed a space for masculine display on an equal plane between colonist and coloniser.
And we had a little time to talk about the BSSH's recent conference in Liverpool and Luise's new role as Membership Secretary of the Society before we were defeated by a group of waiters singing Happy Birthday to somebody.
Luise also talked about her PhD research into the horse economy in Britain during the twentieth century and how a particular statue we both saw in Liverpool recently encapsulates the way in which the horse was central to British society before becoming eclipsed by the arrival of the tractor and the automobile.
Luise Elsaesser is a post-graduate researcher at the European University Institute in Florence where she is completing a PhD on the rise and fall of the horse’s role in British life. The paper that she presented at the Sport and Leisure History seminar was based on her prize-winning paper which she gave at the BSSH’s 2018 conference at the University of Westminster.
Football history in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Geoff talks to Professor Matt Taylor of De Montfort University about the paper he presented at the 2019 BSSH conference in Liverpool regarding sport in Britain during the Second World War. In particular we discuss the issue of Sunday sport - an issue that was far more controversial in the mid-twentieth century than it is nowadays.
Matt also tells me about his role at the Internationational Centre for Sports History and Culture at DMU, as well as discussing his role as a PhD supervisor, and his unusual progress from undergrad to PhD student.
Professor Matt Taylor is one of the UK's leading sports historians with several significant publications on the history of football in particular. His landmark work, 'The Association Game: A History of British Football' came out in 2008. This was followed up by a variety of articles and books, including 'The People's Game', a history of football during WW2. His forthcoming book on sport during the Second World War will be published by Routledge in 2021.
We're talking South African history in this episode with PhD candidate Amelia Clegg of Birkbeck College, University of London. Amelia talks to Geoff about her research into masculinity, sport and the British army during the South African War of 1899-1902.
She also discusses what it's like to go back into Higher Education as a mature student and the way in which Birkbeck acts as a resource for those who want to combine continuing to work with life as a postgraduate. And there's room to talk about Amelia's background in South Africa and how her own family's experience of the South African War informs the research that she is doing now. And I think everyone can agree about the importance of history teachers!
Amelia Clegg completed her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London with a thesis titled, Combat and the Constitution of Middle-Command: Cultures of Leadership of Coldstream Guards Regimental Officers in the South African War (1899-1902). You can follow her on Twitter @AmeliaClegg1
Welsh rugby history with Dr Huw Richards in the twelfth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Huw tells us about 'The Bounce of the Century' which led to Wales' most recent victory over New Zealand in 1953 in a very tight encounter. We also chat about the hotly disputed try that saw the only defeat of the original touring All Blacks in 1905, as well as looking forward to Welsh prospects in this summer's men's Rugby World Cup.
Huw Richards is an Associate Lecturer at the London College of Communication. As well as being a respected historian of sport he is a freelance writer and journalist who has worked for - among others - the BBC, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He’s written a number of authoritative works on the history of rugby including A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby, Dragons and All Blacks and The Red and the White, an account of the rivalry between Wales and England through over a century of rugby.
Geoff is talking to the post-graduate researcher Tom Weir about the development of the Special Olympics in the eleventh Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research.
In a pinoeering research project Tom takes us through the difficult origins of bringing people with intellectual disabilities into the mainstream of participation of sport, with a little help from Superman (Christopher Reeve) along the way.
There's also a discussion of the pioneering black rugby players, James Peters, the first known man of colour to win a cap for England in the early 1900s and his French counterpart, Georges Jérôme. Listen in also to find out about De Montfort University's International Centre for Sport History and Culture and its role in supporting Tom's research. You can also look up the World Rugby Museum to find out more about Tom's work there and I really do recommend a visit if you can make it in the run up to the Rugby Union World Cup in Japan later this year.
This week Geoff is talking to the judo historian Amanda Callan-Spenn about the remarkable and racy life of the pioneering female judo practitioner Sarah Mayer in the tenth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research.
Amanda talks about Sarah Mayer's career as a theatre manager before she went on a remarkable journey across the world to become the first British woman to receive a black belt in judo.
It was also chaos on the podcast this week! We had helicopters, papers blown away, rowdy wait staff and a cup-smashing pigeon (!) so please forgive the edits.
Amanda also talks about her work on an exhibition at the Museum of East Asian Life in Bath which will coincide with the Tokyo Olympics of 2020.
Amanda Callan-Spenn is a biographer and historian working mainly in the areas of theatre and martial arts in the early twentieth century. She is particularly interested in archival research and her recently completed PhD thesis was a biographical study of Sarah Mayer, the first western female judo black belt in Japan.
It's the turbulent history of cricket and society in South Africa in the ninth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research. This week Geoff talks to the cricket historian Dr Richard Parry.
Rich - as he's known to friends - talks about the relatively little known history of African cricket on the Rand from its origin in the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the apartheid state after the Second World War. In particular we discuss the role of cricket in efforts by the racist colonial state to enforce social control on African labour and the way in which at the same time cricket acted as a means of appropriating the 'English game' and transforming it into a vehicle for the social and financial advancement of black players of the game.
Rich's work as a historian of cricket reflects his beginnings as a postgrad researcher into political resistance to colonial rule on the Cape and in Rhodesia. His latest work is part of a wider movement among cricket historians that has sought to integrate sport into the mainstream account of social history in South Africa. This has seen two edited collections published so far taking the history of the game from the nineteenth century via the D'Oliveira Affair to the isolation of the South African cricket team from the Test arena in 1971, Empire & Cricket: The South African Experience 1884-1914 and Cricket and Society in South Africa, 1910-1971.
Dr Richard Parry left South Africa during his student years in the 1970s as a conscientious objector against the racist apartheid state and completed a Masters at Queen’s University, Canada which examined the role of Cecil Rhodes in the development of a segregated society on the Cape. His subsequent PhD at Queen’s examined black worker resistance to colonial power in Rhodesia. While working as a civil servant in the UK and for the OECD in Paris he has continued to write history which combines his love of cricket with his established interest in the resistance to colonialism in Africa.
German boxing in the 1930s in the eighth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research where this week Geoff is talking to Dr Jon Hughes of Royal Holloway, University of London.
Jon talks to us about the paper he gave at the IHR which focused on the biggest ever boxing match to take place in Europe between Max Schmeling and Walter Neusel in August 1934. The fight was a significant event in the cultural and social transformation of Germany brought about by the rise of the Nazi régime in the 1930s and was a forerunner to the 'Fight of the Century' between Schmeling and Joe Louis in 1938. The paper was based on research that Jon conducted in writing his book, Max Schmeling and the Making of a German Hero in Twentieth-Century Germany, which traces Schmeling's career from Weimar to the Cold War.
Geoff also talks to Jon about his work on the journalist and novelist Joseph Roth, in particular his classic novel set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March. And listeners will also be interested in the exhibition that Jon is curating at Royal Holloway on the work of the soccer photographer Peter Robinson which will be on display to coincide with the Euro 2020 whose final matches will be played in Wembley in July next year.
Dr Jon Hughes is Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. His wide-ranging research interests lie in the field of modern German and Austrian literature and film, in particular of the interwar period (1918-1939), and in cultural and media responses to sport and leisure in the German-speaking countries. Current projects include a re-assessment of the work of the Austrian-Jewish sports journalist Willy Meisl, and a study of the representation of leisure in German film of the 1920s and 1930s.
Raf talks to Helena Byrne of the British Library about her work on the UK's Web Archive in the sixth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research.
Helena talks about her own use of the archive for researching the most boring phrases used by football fans(!) as well as giving researchers tips on how to best use the Archive to find what you're looking for, and also how to submit your own webpages for archiving.
With her BL hat on Helena's also been talking to other librarians to give you the lowdown on where you can find useful resources if you're researching sport history, including recent acquisitions related to the history of women's football in England.
Helena also talks about her own ground-breaking research into the development of women's (and men's) football in Ireland, including her recent article in the BSSH's journal Sport in History.
Helena Byrne is the Curator of Web Archives at the British Library. She was the Lead Curator on the IIPC CDG 2018 and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic collections. Helena completed her Master in Library and Information Studies at UCD in 2015. Previously she worked as an English language teacher in Turkey, South Korea and Ireland.
The sixth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research continues the summer interview season Dr Michael John Law.
John (as he's known to friends) is a research fellow at the University of Westminster and has published extensively on British social history in the twentieth century. In a wide-ranging discussion we talk about John's work on modernity in the 1930s, the experience of Americans in Britain in the 1950s and his latest research on the jet set in the 1960s.
We also talk about the joys of returning to higher education as a mature student - John and I met while doing the same MA in London Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London - and the pros and cons of joint authorship.
To find out more about John's work go to his website, or follow @johnlaw100
The fifth Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research continues the summer interview season.
Today my guest is Prof Jean Williams of the University of Wolverhampton where she is professor of Sport in the Institute of Sport and Human Sciences. Jean has published extensively on the history of sport, including her seminal 2003 work on women’s football, ‘A Game for Rough Girls? A History of Women’s Football in England’
In a very topical podcast Jean talks to me about her work on developing a new museum of motorsport at the home of the British Grand Prix, Silverstone. We also talk about the history of women's football and Jean's pioneering work with the National Football Museum to uncover the hidden history of the women's game. Jean is the editor of two special editions of the BSSH's journal Sport in History which bring together a wonderfully diverse collection of articles, ranging from her own co-authored article on the 1971 Women's World Cup to an examination of the significance of the Danish-Afghan footballer Nadia Nadim by Sine Agergaard.
We also talk about Jean's role as a mentor of young historians as a PhD supervisor. Two of Jean's students, Amanda Callan-Spenn and Jo Halpin, will be taking their viva examinations this week and I hope to talk to both of them in the future.
The third Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research features a paper by Jeremy Lonsdale. Jeremy has had two works published recently on the history of Yorkshire cricket and shared his insights into the early history of the game.
Jeremy talked to us about the development of Yorkshire cricket in the nineteenth century and the way in which working men used the game to carve out a new way of making a living, and in the process forged Yorkshire into a cricketing nation with a distinct identity compared to the game's birthplace in the south.
This Sport in History Podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research features a paper by Lisa Taylor of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Lisa talked to us about the development of UK women’s rowing in the long 1960s which saw a greater level of achievement in international competition by British women despite the continuing concentration of resources on developing male rowing talent.
Tune in for a lively discussion and a Q&A between Lisa and the seminar audience!
This podcast it’s the history of Indian cricket with Dr Prashant Kidambi of the University of Leicester. Prashant specialises in the history of India during British rule and has written extensively on the melting pot of India, Bombay. His latest article, ‘The Petition as Event: Colonial Bombay, circa 1889–1914′ was published in Modern Asian Studies in January 2019.
But the discussion focussed on Prashant’s latest book, Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire, which tells the story of the first All-India team to visit Britain in 1911 and much, much more. Prashant talks about the history of Indian cricket in the nineteenth century and the background to the tour, as well as highlighting the role of its captain, Bhupinder Singh, and its star bowler, Palwankar Baloo.
Prashant also questions the idea of the Edwardian Golden Age of cricket. Was it really a Golden Age? And if so, for who? How much is the Golden Age a nostalgia-tinged myth?
Finally we round off by discussing the BSSH’s virtual conference where Prashant will be our keynote speaker. Keep an eye on the BSSH website or Twitter account @BritSportHisSoc for more details.
Women's rugby in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Raf talking to Lydia Furse, who gave a paper at the Sport in History seminar series in 2019.
Lydia's PhD is a pioneering work on the development of women's rugby from its origins in late Victorian Britain through its transformation into the modern game in the 1970s and 1980s. Raf and Lydia talk about the difficulties and opportunities of using personal testimonies and interviews in investigating the intersection between the personal and the political in the context of overturning a century of accumulated prejudice against the participation of women in what has been perceived as the most masculine of sports in the British World.
They also talk more generally about developments in women's history and the changing nature of feminism and its relationship to women's participation in sport.
And Lydia's work has had a major public impact already with her research feeding into the way in which the World Rugby Museum at Twickenham has updated its displays to integrate women's rugby into the history of the game. Finally there's a discussion of the perils of peer review and Raf plugs the Society's grants available to postgrads and postdocs.