CFP: Football and Communities Across Codes

Monday 4th February – Wednesday 6th February 2013

Sydney, Australia

Call for Presentation:

The word “football” conjures up images of very different types of games depending on where one happens to be in the world. But no matter whether players kick a goal, score a try, or score a touchdown on the field, each football code is underpinned by the dynamic interplay between clubs, players, governing institutions, fan communities, individual supporters and the broader social context in which they exist. The resulting relationships are characterised by complexity, conflict, controversy, commodification, and the perhaps most importantly, the (in)constancy of fans. The Global Project on Football and Communities aims to produce a more robust understanding of those dynamics by bringing together scholars, practitioners, fans and other members of sporting communities at the Communities Across Codes conference event in Sydney, Australia. The Antipodean location offers a prime opportunity to explore the dynamics of community with reference to the local codes of football: soccer, Aussie Rules Football, rugby league (NRL) and rugby union. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

From the local to the global – impact of sporting communities?
What is the changing nature of supporter demographics and fan culture?
Branding and marketing – is it all about global expansion?
How are clubs and their supporters engaging with equality and diversity?
What strategies are clubs deployed for engaging with their communities?
How traditional and new media technologies are shaping communities/how communities are shaping media technologies
To what extent do clubs contribute to urban and economic development within local communities?
How can football play a role in community building in terms of social cohesion and circumstances involving peace and conflict?
What sorts of communities are fostered by football—real, virtual, imagined, concepts of authenticity?
How are football communities understood and represented in media, film, television, literature, drama?
How are football communities represented in the press and news media?
How have the dynamics of football communities changed across historical and cultural contexts?
What might the future of football and community look like?

In order to facilitate inter-, cross- and multi-disciplinary dialogue, we welcome proposals for talks, academic papers, workshops, panel debates, fan community and practitioner interactions, performances, and exhibitions of creative work with a view to providing a platform for discussion and an opportunity to build a knowledge base in the field of sports and communities.

The Global Project on Football and Communities is a joint research project between Inter-Disciplinary.Net and the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) Football Cluster.

Abstracts and proposals not exceeding 300 words should be submitted jointly to the Organising Chairs by Friday 14th September 2012. Submissions may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author (s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.
E-mails should be entitled: FCAC Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Deirdre Hynes, Annabel Kiernan, Steve Millington
Football Cluster, Manchester Metropolitan University

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.