Tag: narrative research

Monthly workshops from September 2020 to March 2021 will explores the multiple ways in which various sports have been culturally constructed and experienced, examining the media through which sport is represented: from the national press, often credited for allowing the development of mass spectatorship sport in nineteenth-century Europe, to the new broadcast and social media, which offer new forms of personal investment in the story of sport, via the advent of radio and television.

There has to date been little considered and comparative analysis of the many ways in which sporting stories are told across different cultures and the many purposes they serve. ‘Telling the Story of Sport’ aims to redress this by creating a forum in which individual scholars are invited to contextualise their research and begin to develop a fuller understanding of the phenomenon of sporting narrative practices.

Andrew Sparke’s research and pedagogical interests are inspired by a continuing fascination with the ways that people experience different forms of embodiment over time in a variety of contexts. Andrew's work is necessarily nomadic in nature and dwells in the fertile cracks between disciplines where he finds much that intrigues, amuses and baffles.

Why would an athlete who has a new born baby, a loving husband, and a seemingly thriving sport career try to end her life by attempting suicide? Why might another successful athlete, who regularly wins international championships, experience life as a roller coaster, where mood swings cause them to self-harm?