Sport & Society Research Network

The Network’s story begins in Vancouver, Canada, where the inaugural International Conference on Sport & Society coincided with the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Led by Founding Chair Keith Gilbert, the gathering offered a critical counterpoint to the spectacle unfolding nearby—a space of inquiry and invitation for scholars, educators, and practitioners to examine the deeper cultural and ethical dimensions of sport. While the world celebrated performance and competition, the conference initiated a parallel conversation about identity, fairness, and the forces that make sport a powerful reflection of modern life.

From those early conversations in Vancouver, the Network has grown through partnerships with leading institutions around the world: the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), Universidade Salgado de Oliveira (Brazil), the University of Toronto (Canada), the University of Hawaii at Mānoa (United States), Imperial College London (United Kingdom), Florida International University (United States), Ryerson University (Canada), the University of Granada (Spain), Aarhus University (Denmark), the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (United States), and Monash University (Australia). Each conference extends the Network’s vision of sport as a site of social imagination and inquiry, connecting local experience to global challenges.

Over the years, the Conference has welcomed a remarkable range of voices, from Richard Pound (International Olympic Committee) and Wilfried Lemke (United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace) to Richard Giulianotti (Loughborough University), Eric Anderson (University of Winchester), and Paul McDougall (CBC Sports). These contributions have expanded the Network’s role as a forum for evidence-based reflection on integrity, inclusion, governance, and the cultural power of sport.

Keith Gilbert’s founding vision—of sport as a mirror of society and a medium for social transformation—continues under the leadership of Jörg Krieger (Aarhus University). Since 2019, Krieger has broadened the Network’s scope to include issues of athlete activism, anti-doping policy, and sport integrity within transnational governance frameworks.

In dialogue with major global sporting events and shifting social movements, the Network has maintained its position as a space of critical reflection and collaborative knowledge-making at the intersection of sport, ethics, and culture.

• 2010 - Purpose Driven Sport, UBC Robson Square, Vancouver, Canada
• 2012 - Sporting Narratives, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
• 2013 - Pressure and Possibilities, University Centre, Chicago, USA
• 2014 - Sport and Development, Universidade Salgado de Oliveira, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 2015 - Sport in the America, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
• 2016 - Leisure, Play, Action: Ecological Awareness in Sports, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA
• 2017 - Out of Bounds—Gender, Identity, and Participation in Sport, Imperial College, London, UK
• 2018 - Sports Impacts: Reshaping Cities, Environments, People, Florida International University, Miami, USA
• 2019 - Sports Media Vectors: Digitization, Expanding Audiences, and the Globalization of Live Sport, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
  
• 2020 - Playful Minds: Assessing the Socio-Cultural Potential of Sport and Physical Activity, University of Granada, Granada, Spain (Virtual)
• 2021 - Sport and Society in Crisis, University of Granada, Granada, Spain (Virtual)
• 2022 - Whose Body Is it? Sport and the Problem of Autonomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  
• 2023 - The Impact of Professional Sport on Community, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
  
• 2024 - Teaching & Learning Physical Education, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  
• 2025 - Global Sports, Local Cultures, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia