Clément Astruc is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Paris-Est Créteil (AEI International School) and a member of the Hannah Arendt Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Political Studies (LIPHA). In 2022, he completed a PhD thesis in contemporary history entitled “Football: an ambassador for Brazil? An international projection through sport (1945–1974)”, at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, supervised by Olivier Compagnon and Fabien Archambault.
Paul Batcabe Lacoste
Paul Batcabe-Lacoste is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure and a PhD student in contemporary history at the University of Strasbourg since November 2025, under the joint supervision of Emmanuel Droit (LinCs, an interdisciplinary laboratory in cultural studies) and Sylvain Dufraisse (CENS, University of Nantes). His thesis, entitled The Peace Race: a Tour de France in the East? (1948–1992), examines this transnational cycling event of the socialist bloc as a lens through which to observe communist and post-socialist societies, drawing on Polish (AAN), Czech (NA) and East German (SAPMO-BArch) archives, and combining social and cultural history of politics with Sport Studies.
Sylvie Bossy-Guérin is a History and Geography teacher at the Lycée Julien Gracq in Beaupréau (Maine-et-Loire, France) and a member of the Centre for Research in International and Atlantic History (CRHIA) at the University of Nantes. In 2025, she completed a PhD thesis in contemporary history entitled “Cultural transfers and the circulation of sporting knowledge and techniques: British influence on the practice of rugby in western France (1872–1947)”, at the University of Nantes, under the supervision of Stanislas Jeannesson and Olivier Chovaux.
Camille Boutron is a sociologist, a PhD graduate of the University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Peace. A specialist in gender issues in the context of armed conflict, she spent several years in Latin America, where she carried out her initial research on female combatants in Peru and Colombia, before returning to France to continue her research on gender policies in international security. In 2024, she published the book Female Combatants: When Women Go to War with Les Pérégrines editions. In 2026, she began a new research project focusing on the role of equestrian sports in sports and cultural diplomacy.
Xavier Breuil, who holds a PhD in history and specialises in the history of sport, is a curator (Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) and an associate researcher at the Marie and Louis Pasteur University in Besançon (France). A member of the editorial board of the journal Football(s), he is currently leading a research project on the multifaceted interactions between sport and the steel industry in France, Luxembourg and Belgium, whilst continuing his research into the history of Belgian football.
Louis Brosseau is a PhD candidate in history at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). His research focuses on Soviet-African sporting relations during the Cold War. His first book, African Athletes on Red Square (2026), analyses the Soviet ‘Olympic diplomacy’ campaign led by the Moscow Games Organising Committee between 1976 and 1980 to persuade African states to participate in the XXII Summer Olympic Games. His doctoral thesis aims to examine the Kremlin’s sports diplomacy towards Congo-Brazzaville and Dahomey (Benin) during the Brezhnev era.
Jean-Loup Chappelet is an honorary professor at the University of Lausanne, where he taught public management and sports management for nearly thirty years at the Institute of Higher Studies in Public Administration (IDHEAP). He has just published an article in the AJHS&C entitled Towards a new global sporting order?
Dr. Bharti Chhibber is teaching in University of Delhi, India. Dr. Chhibber is an author, socio- political analyst and an environmentalist. She is working, extensively writing, mentoring and speaking in India and abroad for many years in the wide-ranging areas of international relations diplomacy, Europe, US, Indo-Pacific, comparative area studies, historical studies, Indigenous knowledge system, SDGs, gender, culture and climate change. Dr. Chhibber has more than 200 publications including books, research papers and articles to her credit. She is regularly invited as an expert in electronic and print media interviews, discussions, and international conferences in different countries. Dr. Chhibber has been honoured with international and national awards including Sustainability International Award 2025, Indo-Pacific Outstanding Political Scientist Award 2022, International Distinguished Scientist Award 2021. She is on the Advisory Board of several organizations including honorary National Coordinator-Sustainability Education, India. Dr. Chhibber was a visiting faculty climate leader, Spain in 2021, and Study of US Institutions Invited Scholar in America in 2023. Recently, Dr. Bharti Chhibber was invited to Europe to speak on India-Europe, historical studies, gender and climate change.
Sarah Clinet is Head of the French Diplomatic Archives Processing and Communication Unit at La Courneuve.
Damien Combredet-Blassel
Damien Combredet-Blassel is the Sports Ambassador for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Romain Crunchant
Romain Crunchant, a PhD student at Lumière Lyon 2 University and a secondary school teacher of history and geography, is writing a thesis under the supervision of Edouard Lynch and Patrick Clastres on the political, diplomatic and media dimensions of French mountaineering in the Himalayas between 1950 and 1979.
Dr Yassine El Yattioui is a lecturer at Lumière Lyon II University and an associate researcher at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico), within the ‘North Africa and the Middle East’ research group. He holds a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Salamanca (Spain), having successfully defended a thesis written in English on Morocco’s foreign policy and economic diplomacy in Africa. His research focuses on diplomacy, soft power, strategies of influence and the geopolitical dynamics of Africa, the Near East and the Middle East. He adopts a resolutely interdisciplinary approach, combining international relations, geopolitics, organisational sociology and diplomacy, with a particular focus on contemporary influence policies.
Historian by training (PhD from King’s College London), Axel Elías is currently a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales at the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. His research focuses on everyday forms of nation building in Latin America and the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first century. He analyses interactions among governments, international actors and sectors of the citizenry in two fields: sport and physical culture, as well as foodways and migration. He leads the public history project, Mundo Mundanal (in Spanish) where I link art and social sciences with everyday life.
Romain Gardi is a history and geography teacher at Marcel Pagnol Secondary School (Pertuis) and a PhD student in contemporary history at the Norbert Elias Centre (UMR 8562 CNRS/Avignon University/Aix-Marseille University). Since 2021, he has been working on a thesis entitled In the Shadow of Olympique de Marseille. A social and cultural history of football in Vaucluse (late 19th century – early 1980s). His research focuses on the social and cultural history of football, particularly in rural areas.
Dr. Santos Júnior is an Assistant Professor of Writing of History at Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (Udesc), Brazil. His research agenda relays on the intersection of Sport History, Global History, Cultural Diplomacy and Digital Public History, with special interest on Jiu-Jitsu history. His recent publications on top international journals, such Revista Brasileira de História and Iberoamericana (Berlin) combine rigorous empirical research with transnational and global perspective.
Chepchirchir Tirop is an historian of Africa interested in the social, political and cultural histories of East Africa. Her current project examines the political role of athletics in Kenya from 1945 to 2000. Her scholarship has appeared in publications such as Journal of African History, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, and Africa is a Country. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Boston University’s History Department.
