Tag: Ali Bowes

The edited collection Women’s Football by Jacky Forsyth and Claire-Marie Roberts (Routledge) provides a thorough, yet straightforward and accessible, analysis of the key physiological, biomechanical and social-psychological issues that can be applied to achieve women’s footballing development. Our knowledgeable reviewer Payam Ansari in turn provides a useful introduction to this rich tome which offers cutting-edge insights into all aspects of women’s football, including match play, talent identification, eating disorders, and breast health.

IRSS is a peer reviewed academic journal. Its main purpose is to disseminate research and scholarship on sport throughout the international academic community. The journal publishes research articles of varying lengths, as well as book and media reviews. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Studying professional women footballers: A reflexive commentary on being benched from recruitment by Laura Harris and Dawn E Trussell (open access).

Roberts, Whigham, Culvin & Parnell’s edited collection Critical Issues in Football: A Sociological Analysis of the Beautiful Game (Routledge) sheds critical new light on key issues in contemporary football, with each chapter using a different theoretical lens. This leads our reviewer Arve Hjelseth to commending the inclusion of major sociological thinkers, but also to the conclusion that the book, which he considers a useful addition to the critical study of football, is not ‘a sociological analysis’ but rather many analyses. And that’s football for you.

Featuring a range of mega-event case studies and conceptual discussions, Katherine Dashper’s edited collection Sport, Gender and Mega-Events (Emerald) and considers how these highly mediatised global phenomena both reflect and help shape broader ideas about gender, sex and identity in and beyond sport. Sepandarmaz Mashreghi is our reviewer, and having some doubts as to the transforming powers of mega-events in terms of gender inequalities within sports, she still finds the collection to be a valuable contribution to the issue of sport mega-event and gender.

C&S is a cutting-edge peer-reviewed quarterly that publishes research to foster international scholarly understanding of the nexus of communication and sport that engages a broad intellectual community. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Wearable Fitness Devices: An Investigation into Co-constructed Meaning of Use by Matthew Blaszka, Natasha A. Rascon.

The emphasis of Leisure Studies is on theoretically informed critical analyses within the social sciences and humanities of the topics that constitute leisure as a subject field – including the arts, tourism, sport and more. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Young surfers finding their wave: telling the tale of enskilment in surf places by Alex Prins & Brian Wattchow.

Athlete Activism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Rory Magrath (Routledge) examines the phenomenon of athlete activism across all levels of sport, from elite and international sport, to collegiate and semi-pro, and asks what this tells us about the relationship between sport and wider society. Our reviewer Steph Doehler finds that the collection, albeit less international than proclaimed, still expands knowledge in the field – besides being both insightful and thoroughly entertaining.

Managing Sport and Leisure is a refereed journal that publishes high quality research articles to inform and stimulate discussions relevant to sport and leisure management globally. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: United as one: the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup hosting vision and the symbolic politics of legacy bt Adam Scott Beissel & Geoffery Z. Kohe.

Soccer, a.k.a (association) football is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, and aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Should I stay (at home) or should I go (to the stadium)? Why will some football supporters not return to the stadium after the COVID-19 pandemic in German Bundesliga? by Uwe Wilkesmann.

As women’s sport continues to grow and develop there is an increasing need to critically examine the conditions in which women as athletes operate. Ali Bowes’ and Alex Culvin’s anthology The Professionalisation of Women’s Sport: Issues and Debates (Emerald Publishing) discusses the processes of professionalisation in women’s sports. Our reviewer is Alan Bairner, and he underlines that women’s professional sport needs to learn from the mistakes that have been made in men’s professional sport.