Tag: Niamh Kitching

Politics, Social Issues and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, edited by Danielle Sarver Coombs and Molly Yanity (Routledge) takes a close look at politics and social issues in the context of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup that took place in Australia and New Zealand and is one of the most attended women’s sporting events in history. Christian Tolstrup Jensen appreciates that the book takes a broad view on women’s football with a global perspective. He also notes that the Cup in fact plays a very limited role in many chapters.

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: Navigating the double bind – gendered attitudes towards appearance-based exercise in Finland by Anna Grahn (open access).

Sport, Education and Society encourages contributions from social scientists and educationalists studying the relationships between pedagogy, ‘the body’ and society, The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Building the feminist futsal project: ‘where is feminism?’ by Martina Burch, Carine Collet & Guy Ginciene.

Natalie Barker-Ruchti & Laura G. Purdy’s edited volume Sports Coaching Education and Alternative Pedagogies: Approaches in Higher Education (Routledge) theorizes alternative pedagogies and presents examples of what such teaching looks like in sports coaching higher education. Sanna Erdoğan’s review provides a comprehensive overview of each chapter in the book and concludes with suggestions of the book’s potential contributions to the field of higher education, accompanied by a set of reflective observations intended to stimulate further consideration and dialogue.

Progressive and broad-ranging, The Routledge Handbook of Gender Politics in Sport and Physical Activity edited by Győző Molnár and Rachael Bullingham, offers a comprehensive overview of the complex intersections between politics, gender, sport and physical activity. In her thorough, competent and highly useful review of this 32 chapters anthology, Anna Sätre highlights the underlying aims of the collection, some detectable trends among the contributions, and several of the chapters that stand out for their critical and innovative approaches.

Academics in various disciplines are writing about sport. Sport in Society is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary forum for academics to discuss the growing relationship of sport to significant areas of modern life. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Beyond the Noise: the cultural (or subcultural) politics of Irish surf films by Stephen Boyd (open access).

Motivation and commitment of volunteers at parkrun events by Gillian Renfree & Julia West (open access).

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.

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.