Plenary Speakers

The International Conference on Sport and Society will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations, by researchers and practitioners.

Garden Conversations

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.

The Speakers

Dr Keith Gilbert

Dr. Keith Gilbert is a Professor in the School of Health & Bioscience at the University of East London and Director of the Centre for Disability, Sport & Health. He researches in the area of sport sociology [which includes opening up many areas of research innovation] and disability of sport and has a strong interest in qualitative, interpretive and narrative research methodologies. He has numerous publications and has edited several books in the broad areas of sport, sociology, cultural studies, environment and disability which include the following:

• ‘Paralympic Legacies’
  
• ‘Sustainability and Sport’
  
• ‘Paralympics and the Media’  [Forthcoming]
• ‘Sport, Peace and Development’ [Forthcoming]
• ‘The Paralympics: Empowerment or Sideshow’.
• ‘Sexuality, Sport and the Culture of Risk’,
• ‘Extending the Boundaries: Theoretical Frameworks for Research in Sports Management’.
• ‘Some like It Hot: The Beach as Cultural Dimension’,
• ‘Life on the Margins: Implications for Health Research’
• ‘Reconstructing Lives: The Problem of Retirement from Elite Sport’
• ‘Striving for Balance: Modernity and Elite Sport from an Islamic Perspective.

Along with the above, Dr. Gilbert has written over 55 published research articles. He has been an Executive Board Member of the International Council of Sports Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE) and is currently on the publications Board of (ICSSPE). He has won university awards for teaching and also professional development and given numerous keynote conference presentations. Dr. Gilbert has several PhD students working across different areas of sport and society. His own current research interests include the exploration of the sociological dimensions of sport, sport and the environment, legacy and Paralympic research. Professor Gilbert is chief editor of the International Journal of Sport in Society and he has two book series one in the area of Disability and Sport and the other in the broad area of Sport in Society. Professor Gilbert was also the organiser and chair of a conference on Sport in Society with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in March 2010 between the Winter Olympics and Paralympics and will continue the Sport and Society conferences in Kolkata 2011 and Cambridge 2012.

Keith was the Assistant Chef de Mission [Administration] of the Australian Paralympic Team in Sydney 2000 and maintains a healthy relationship with Australian, British and international sport. He has been the manager of Australian International teams at the Paralympic level in Birmingham, [Australian Athletics] Bangkok Full Australian team] and Christchurch [Australian Swimming]. He was awarded an Australian Prime Ministers medal for his work prior to and at the Sydney 2000 Games and he is currently working with the USOC for London 2012 and worked with them in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. He has eased the USOC team into London and established the relationship which the University of East London now enjoys. He has attended four Olympics and two Paralympic Games in differing capacities from researcher to manager. Dr. Gilbert was an IOC research scholarship winner spending twelve weeks studying the IOC in Lausanne and as such has many contacts in sport at the elite, county and club levels. He organised the University of London’s visit to the Beijing Olympic Games for a six week period and is on the UEL Olympic and Paralympic committee where he has assisted in the organisation of various activities and events involving LOCOG, BPA, USOC, ASICS and Singapore teams

Andrew C. Sparkes

Andrew C. Sparkes PhD is Professor of Sport & Body Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education, Community & Leisure at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England. His research interests revolve around the ways that people experience different forms of embodiment over time in a variety of contexts. Recent work has focused on performing bodies and identity formation; catastrophic spinal cord injury in sport and the narrative reconstruction of self; ageing bodies; and the lives and careers of marginalized individuals and groups. These interests are framed by a desire to develop interpretative forms of understanding via the use of life history, ethnography, and narrative approaches. His work is nomadic in nature, operating across disciplinary boundaries and flourishing in the fertile spaces between them. Whilst respecting traditions he seeks to trouble standard notions of method and aspires to represent lived experience using a variety of genres.

Andrew has published extensively on each of these topics as well as on methodological issues in qualitative research across a range of disciplines in international peer reviewed journals including: Qualitative Research; Social Science & Medicine ; Sociology of Health & Illness; Health; Disability & Society, Journal of Aging Studies; Sport, Education and Society; Psychology of Sport and Exercise; The Sport Psychologist; and Sociology of Sport Journal. He has authored several books including Telling Tales in Sport & Physical Activity: A Qualitative Journey, and written many book chapters in leading texts, such as, Handbook of Constructionist Research edited J. Holstein & J. Gubrium; Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research edited by G. Knowles & A. Cole; Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics edited by A. Bochner & C. Ellis; Physical Culture, Power, and the Body edited by J. Hargreaves & P. Vertinsky; and Body Knowledge and Control edited by J. Evans, B. Davies & J. Wright. He is currently editor of the annual British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Yearbook. Andrew serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the following journals: Sport, Education and Society; Qualitative Research in Sport & Exercise; and is a member of the Editorial Boards for the following journals: Journal of Aging Studies; The Sport Psychologist; Psychology of Sport and Exercise ; International Journal of Men’s Health; Journal of Applied Sport Psychology; European Physical Education Review; and Agora: Para la educacion fisica y el deporte (Spain).

Nicholas Watson

Professor Nicholas Watson is the Present Director at Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research and Professor of Disability Studies, University of Glasgow. Prior, he taught from 1992-2004 as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests revolve around disability and disability theory. Previous research has included work on disability and childhood, disability theory, identity, the role of impairment, care and personal assistance, disability and technology and disability history. Current research projects include:Disabled people’s experiences of and access to woodland;The Provision of Home Care;The experiences of young people in receipt of home ventilation and their transition to adulthood; The impact of the new single equality body; An in-depth examination of public bodies’ experience f implementing the disability equality duty.