AER publishes innovative original research, opinion, and educational information related to Esports. All disciplines and approaches to understanding Esports are encouraged, with special interest in the health, performance and experience, and well-being of players, fans, and coaches. Our goal is to advance academic and industry discussions and research in Esports. We welcome empirical, conceptual, and qualitative research and industry driven manuscripts. AER is an open access journal published through Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.

This conference aims to critically investigate our own research field, i.e. Sports Studies. Within sports and physical activities, bodies are exposed, ranked, and naturalised, in the name of a collective understanding of sporting performance, all the while relying on and reproducing sexist, racist, heteronormative, ableist and classist bias. The primary focus will be to understand how expanding our research focuses and literature, allows for innovative research avenues.

Appearing in the 19th century and popularised in the 20th century, football has reached the new millennium as a trend and behaviour setter, assuming itself as a complex “integral social factor” worthy of profound reflection and research by the Social, Human and Communication Sciences. The challenge of this issue is to demonstrate how football can and should be the subject of research in the academic and scientific sphere, given its social plasticity and appeal to interdisciplinary and/or multidisciplinary approaches.