Dear ISHPES Colleagues,
This report reaches you a bit later than usual. However, thanks to the work of our Webmaster, Heather Dichter, many things that I used to tell you in out bulletin or newsletter can only now be found on our constantly updated website.
ISHPES can look back on a successful year 2015 with 140 members from 34 countries by the time of our conference, though we still have only a few members from Oceania and the African continent. Our annual congress was titled “Coming from the Past, Working in the Present, Looking in the Future: Aims, Topics, Results in Sport History”. It was organized by the Croatian Society for Sport History, the Croatian Olympic Academy and Split Sports Association with Zrinko Čustonja, president of the organizing team in Split. It took place in Croatia from 18-22 August had around 100 participants from 31 countries (including North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe). Not only did we listen to a variety of excellent papers, but we also could enjoy now and then the seaside in the middle of August.
We had a number of keynotes among them Susan Bandy (Ohio State University) who gave or presented the Routledge Keynote “The Intersections of Sport History and Sport Literature: Toward a Transdisciplinary Perspective”. Rudolf Müllner (University of Vienna) was the winner of the ISHPES Award. He presented a paper on “(Self-)Improvement in and through Sports – Cultural-Historical Perspectives”. Both presentations will be published in the 2016 special ISHPES issue of The International Journal for the History of Sport (IJHS). The Gigliola Gori Junior Scholar Award was won by the young Italian Dario Nardini (University of Siena) who handed in the paper “Gouren, the Breton Way to Wrestle”. The publication can be read in one of the following Stadion editions.
Touching on these awards, I would like to remind you to tell your PhD students to send in papers for this year´s Gigliola Gori Award. The deadline is April 30, 2016. More information can be found on the ISHPES homepage.
We are still maintaining a close connection to Routledge who not only supports the Routledge Keynote, but who gives us every year the possibility to a have special issue of the IJHS. In 2015 we edited our second special issue which mainly contained papers from our conference held in 2014 in Doha, Qatar. Both the 2014 and 2015 issues will now be printed as books and come out this year. I also would like to remind you that your ISHPES membership allows you to access the IJHS in this year online for free. In case you did not automatically receive information on how to access the journal, please contact Jacqueline Tearle – from the Taylor & Francis Group by e-mail.
Besides our own congress we were patrons for two further events: The annual meeting of the Transnational Working Group of the Study of Gender and Sport which took place in Basel, Switzerland in November and the ski history congress, “First Tracks” in December 2015 organized in St. Anton (Arlberg), Austria, by our members Christof Thöni and Rudolf Müllner. Both events were very well received, and the organizations of the sessions allowed a lot of discussion and exchange between the audience and presenters.
Our own next big event “Sites of Sports in History” is approaching. This congress will be held from June 29 to July 2, 2016, in Paris. The main organizer Pierre-Olaf Schut is already busy with his preparations which sound very promising. As many of you have probably noticed for this congress we are using an electronic system for the abstracts which should help the Scientific Committee.
The Paris Congress will be connected with the PhD Summer School which for over 10 years was organized by Gertrud Pfister and her team at the Copenhagen University. This time it will be held partly overlapping with our congress. We are hoping that through this arrangement young scholars from various social and human sciences of sports will get interested in ISHPES and its work.
ISHPES is a member of ICSSPE (International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education) which is involved in the Congress of the International Convention on Science, Education and Medicine in Sport (ICSEMIS). This congress will be held shortly before the Paralympics from August 31 – September 4, 2016 in Santo, Brazil. I was chosen as a member of the Scientific Committee. For all the invited symposia in the field of culture and humanities in sports we are trying to have one speaker who presents a historical perspective on the chosen topic. In July the European College of Sport Science (ECSS) is organizing its annual congress. Here Rudolf Müllner, Sandra Günter and I will present sport history in the invited session “(Self-)Improvement In and Through Sports and Physical Exercise – Historical Perspectives”.
I hope to see you all in Paris
Annette R. Hofmann
ISHPES President