Dear SSG Colleagues

As we say goodbye to 2012 it seems an opportune time to let you know about some of the study group activities arranged for next year.

1. BSA Annual Conference, London 3-5 April

1.1 Sport Study Group Stream Plenary - ‘Sport for All and the Life Course’, 4 April

A Sport Study Group stream plenary event will be held during the British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2013 on Thursday 4th April 2013 in the Grand Connaught Rooms, Central London. The BSA invited applications to put on a stream-plenary event related to the theme of ‘Engaging Sociology’.  The theme of this stream-plenary – ‘Sport for All and the Life Course’ - addresses the BSA 2013 Conference theme as it is part of the process already underway of critical engagement with the legacy agenda of sports mega-events.  It is also an opportunity to focus on sport in more mundane but no less significant areas of social life, drawing attention to the complexities of sport participation. The two keynote speakers will be Emmanuelle Tulle (Glasgow Caledonian University) - Physical activity and sedentary behaviour: reconstructing the whole life course and Cassandra Phoenix (Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry/ Universities of Exeter & Plymouth) – Responding to Stories of Ageing and Physical Activity: A Life Course Approach.

1.2 Sport Study Group Business Meeting, 4 April

The study group will hold its annual business meeting in the middle of the second day of the conference. Items for discussion will be circulated in advance.

 
2. 'Sport and Protest: From the Suffragettes to the Corporate Olympics', 17 May

As the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has amply demonstrated, major sports events function as key moments for the expression and construction of collective social identities. But such events also appear – perhaps increasingly? – to be a locus for the expression and construction of collective social grievances. This day conference, ‘Sport and Protest: From the Suffragettes to the Corporate Olympics’, to be held at Aston University on 17 May 2013, aims to bring together academics and activists to discuss the changing relationships, mediatisation, spatial configurations, processes and ideological meanings of social mobilisation against or through sports events.

Further details about this day conference will be made available in January 2013.


3. Sport Study Group Postgraduate Day Conference, 6 September

The postgraduate day conference will be hosted in 2013 by Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent. Further details will be circulated in the new year.

Colleagues at other universities have already expressed interest in hosting events next year and beyond. If you would like to host an event - from a half day seminar to a day/ two day conference, please get in touch.

All the very best for the holidays and the year ahead.

John

Professor John Horne
BSA SSG Convenor