Sport in History

“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 cro...

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=FvD...

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, J...

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 journa...

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 o...

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...

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, 'T...

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 Collabor...

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 podcast is a British Society of Sports History (BSSH) production from the UK's leading society for the history of sport.. You can find the podcast on all s...

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 w...

Article Reference:Riseman, Noah. "A history of transgender women in Australian Sports, 1976–2017." Sport in History (2021): 1-28.Caroline LaytCaroline’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 prejudi...

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. This po...

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 (Bournemou...

Documenting the Olympics and Paralympics Day 2The 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 Collect...

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 s...

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 ev...

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/10.1080/17460263.20...

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 w...

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. This podcast is a British Socie...

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 is a British Society of Sports History (BSSH) production from the UK's leading society for the history of sport.. You can fi...

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 colle...

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. This podcas...

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 v...

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...

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 f...