Gerard A. Akindes is presently an adjunct faculty at Northwestern University, Qatar, and New York University. During his tenure in Qatar, he contributed to the Josoor Institute, a legacy program associated with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Before Qatar, Gerard held a position in the Department of Sports Administration at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he taught sports management and sports and development. His scholarly contributions primarily revolve around international sports management, sports broadcasting, and the mobility and migration of elite athletes. He co-edited a book on identities, politics, football in Africa, and “Sports in Africa, Past and Present.” He is the co-founder and coordinator of SportsAfrica Network conferences and the Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of African Sports at Ohio University, known as Impumelelo.
Arnaud Amouroux works for the United Nations and is a guest collaborator at the Johan Cruyff Institute, where he teaches and speaks on Sport, Sustainability, and Governance.
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 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.
Since 2022, I have been an associate professor in German studies in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at the University of Rennes 2 (France). I defended my doctoral dissertation in December 2019 at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. In this work, I examined the Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur in Leipzig as a microcosm of the GDR’s sports system. The dissertation was supervised by Armin Owzar and published in 2024 by Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. My research interests focus on the SED regime’s instrumentalization of sport for political and diplomatic purposes, as well as on the strategies developed by actors within the sports movement to respond to these expectations. More recently, my work—conducted in particular within the STADE project (Supporters and Traditions in East Germany)—has turned to fan cultures and their relationship to collective identities in the new German Länder since reunification.
Jenné Blackburn is the author/founder of Always An Athlete®, published in partnership with the University of Tennessee’s Center for Sport, Peace, and Society and launched at the prestigious EspnW summit with endorsements from Billie Jean King to doctors and sports administrators. Always An Athlete® is a movement and wellness building initiative that supports post-competitive athletes as they reclaim their athletic mindset and continue their athlete journey—through lifelong movement, storytelling, and meaningful reintegration into their local community. With extensive experience across sports development, nonprofit partnerships, and Olympic programming (specifically volleyball marketing), Blackburn works at the intersection of athlete transition, community sport, and sports diplomacy. She develops tools and frameworks that empower former competitive athletes to lead and serve as ambassadors in their second chapters, with a strong emphasis on mental, physical well-being and lifelong community connection
Dominique Blanc is a Global Advisor at AccessibAll and former president of the Swiss Football Association. During his presidency, Switzerland was awarded the right to host the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025. He has extensive experience in international sports governance and the institutional dynamics linking federations, public authorities and economic stakeholders.
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.
Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui is a historian from Brazil. He holds a BA and MA in Social History from Fluminense Federal University (UFF), with funding from CNPq and FAPERJ, and a PhD in Social History from the University of São Paulo (USP), with partial funding from CNPq and full funding from FAPESP. During his doctoral studies, he completed a research fellowship at Freie Universität Berlin and was a recipient of the FIFA João Havelange Scholarship at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was also awarded a Fulbright Junior Faculty Fellowship for a Visiting Professorship at the University of Illinois. His book, A Dança das Cadeiras: A Eleição de João Havelange à Presidência da FIFA (The Musical Chairs: The Election of João Havelange to the FIFA Presidency), is available in both Portuguese and English and has been widely recognized as an original contribution to the global and political history of sport.
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 is the Sports Ambassador for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Pompiliu-Nicolae Constantin is a professor of sports history at the National University of Physical Education and Sports in Bucharest (Romania). He obtained a PhD in history from the University of Bucharest and a PhD in political sciences from the Free University of Brussels. During 2023-2024, he served as a Fulbright visiting scholar at Penn State University, conducting research related to sport diplomacy in the Romania-US relationship. Previously, as part of the project ‘Towards an EU Sport diplomacy’ (2021-2022), he produced national reports on sport diplomacy in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
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.
Yannick Deschamps, a senior lecturer at the University of Picardie Jules Verne and a member of the Centre for the History of Societies, Sciences and Conflicts, conducts research into the history of sports diplomacy, examining its political, cultural and economic dimensions. He completed a thesis entitled ‘Sports diplomacy between France and the USSR, from the 1920s to 1991. Actors, Exchanges and Strategies, at the University of Strasbourg, and has notably published ‘Sports Exchanges and Contacts between France and the USSR at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Beginnings of Bilateral Sports Diplomacy (1947–1953)’, in World Wars and Contemporary Conflicts, in 2020; “‘How much are you ready to pay?’: the marketing of Soviet athletes to France in the era of perestroika”, Sciences sociales et sport, and “Hand in Hand: Seoul 1988 and the end of the Cold War?” in Nicolas Bancel (et al.), Olympism, another history of the world. From the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris in 2024, in 2024.
Paul Dietschy, Professor of Contemporary History at Marie and Louis Pasteur University (Besançon, France) and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Football(s). History, Culture, Economy, Society, is a specialist in the history of sport and football.
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.
Renhui Feng, Chinese, a PhD candidate of School of ForeignLanguages, Chengdu Sport University. Her research area is China’s sport diplomacy
Olakunle Folami
Olakunle Michael Folami is a Professor at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Sociology and Anthropology, specializing in Criminology, from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Professor Folami earned his PhD in Transitional Justice from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. His research excellence was recognized with the Distinguished Paper Award at the 2nd Istanbul Conference on Democracy and Global Security. He also completed a research fellowship on the acceptance of International Criminal Justice at the Nuremberg International Principles Academy, Germany. Professor Folami has participated in the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) Executive Course on Human Rights and Drug Policy in Ghana, as well as the Father Patrick Desbois Summer Academy at the Ackerman Center of Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas, USA. He has previously served as the Director of the Center for Entrepreneur Development and is currently the Head of the Department of Criminology and Security Studies at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria.
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.
Bérénice Guyot-Réchard is a Senior Lecturer (Reader) in Contemporary History at King’s College London, specializing in the Indian subcontinent and international relations. Her research focuses on the processes of decolonization and state formation, Indian and Sri Lankan diplomacy, and the role of border and maritime spaces in the world order, from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. She has published extensively on the Sino-Indian conflict, India-Burma relations, northeastern India, Indo-African relations, and the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris, the London School of Economics (LSE), and Cambridge, she is a regular commentator in the media and political forums. Her research has received numerous awards, including the Prince Consort Prize and the Seeley Medal from the University of Cambridge, the British Academy Rising Star Award, and the 2023 Leverhulme Prize for her body of research to date.
Helena Hanhikangas is a doctoral researcher from the universities of Leiden (Netherlands) and Turku (Finland). Her joint-PhD-project involves political history of sports in Asia which she approaches through Korean martial arts: the different groups of taekwondos, with the focus on the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF). She is interested of the ITF’s wider historical and political connections with North and South Korean states (and vice versa); ITF’s connections with the Korean democratic and independence moments; and the history of the ITF that both resisted and accepted sports political appropriation and use. Her PhD-project is continuation to her MA-thesis (Centre of East Asian Studies, University of Turku, 2023), and her research is firmly based on her earlier MA in history where she focused on the formation of civic moments, nation states and democracy (Finnish and International History, University of Tampere, 2008). For the past 30 years she has practiced (ITF) taekwon-do, and for those 30 years she has also aimed to understand its political use, which is now finally turning into research.
Lucie Hémeury is Junior Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Center for Olympic Studies and Globalisation of Sport of the Sport Sciences Institute at the University of Lausanne. PhD in history from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 (2018). Since 2022, research fellow and junior lecturer at the Sports Sciences Institute at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Her thesis focuses on the relationship between sport and politics in Argentina during the Peronist period (1946-1955). Her current research focuses on the genesis of the Pan-American sports movement, the commercialisation of the Olympic movement, sports diplomacy and the role of sports actors in international relations.
John Hennessey-Niland is a Former U.S. Ambassador, 35 years of experience, proven foreign policy and national security leader, successful team builder and international negotiator. Focused on key issues impacting peace and prosperity, particularly in the Indo-Pacific and Europe, with a network of high-level contacts in government, business and civil society. Currently Professor of Practice in International Affairs, author, speaker, and media commentator.
Dr. Sarah J. Hillyer is founder and Director of the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace & Society. In 2012, the Center was recognized by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as the implementing partner of the U.S. Department of State’s Global Sports Mentoring Program to create a global initiative designed to empower women, girls, persons with disabilities, and refugees through sport. Since then, Dr. Sarah and her team have worked alongside more than 5,000 women, men, and youth from 100+ countries, impacting more than 500,000 people. The Center’s work has been recognized by ESPN (2018 winner, Stuart Scott Humanitarian Award for the most courageous use of sport to advance women’s rights and promote peace worldwide) and Peace & Sport Monaco (2018 winner, Diplomatic Action of the Year). In 2024, the Center’s work to help save the lives of 13 women’s basketball players from Afghanistan was honored with the “For the Love of the Game” award by the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Brad Horn is a strategic advisor, Professor of Practice, and university administrator, specializing in global sport governance, anti-doping policy, crisis communication, and reputation management. He previously has held senior leadership roles at the U.S. AntiDoping Agency (USADA) and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, where he worked at the intersection of regulatory enforcement, international coordination, and building public trust in sport institutions. Horn is a Professor of Practice in Public Relations and the Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where his creative work and teaching focus on crisis communication, global sport communications, and strategic public relations.
Dr. Iker Ibarrondo-Merino is a Lecturer at the Universidad de Alcalá (Spain). He was awarded the CESH Early Career Scholar Award 2018 and has recently published in The International Journal of the History of Sport and other leading history journals. His research interests are workers’ sports and sports politics in Spain, sportswomen in history and antifascist movements.
Yvan Issekin has held a PhD in Political Science from the University of Yaoundé II since 2020. He is an associate lecturer (Catholic University of Central Africa – UCAC) and a researcher at several public (CERDEPS/CERDAP/LADIG/University of Yaoundé II) and private research institutions. He is the author of some twenty articles and book chapters focusing primarily on the sociology of voting, symbolic politics, local geopolitics and the geopolitics of sport.
Manon Iurettigh is a PhD student in contemporary history at the University of Lyon 3 Jean Moulin (LARHRA), supervised by Eric Baratay. She is writing a thesis on the racehorse as a historical actor, analysing how its experiences, emotions and human knowledge have shaped, from the 18th to the 21st century, the relationship between humans and horses and the transformations in the world of horse racing.
Olivier Jarosz is a board member of LTT Sports and CEO of AccessibAll. With over 15 years’ experience in the sector, he advises executives, investors and clubs on performance issues both on and off the pitch, using an approach that combines business intelligence, strategy and governance. He is the author of numerous articles and the book *Geopolityka Sportowa [2024]*. He teaches at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, amongst other institutions. He is also co-author of the ECA Club Management Guide and founder of the ECACMP programme, the first executive programme designed for club top management. His experience is underpinned by a network of over 300 clubs, project management (academy reports, analysis of women’s football) and the organisation of over 30 workshops and conferences (club strategy, training, HR, innovation, esports).
Neni Juli Astuti
Neni Juli Astuti is researcher at BPMP Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia
François-René Julliard, a former student of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Lyon and a qualified history teacher, defended his thesis in 2022, entitled ““This medal is for Black America’. Black American Olympic athletes: between sporting excellence and the struggle for equality (1896–1984)”. He is currently a lecturer and researcher at the University of Paris Nanterre.
Joonas Kananen is a doctoral researcher affiliated with the University of Turku. His dissertation studies social and cultural meanings produced in the spaces of football in Fascist Italy between 1926 and 1934. Besides the spatial elements and architecture of sports, his interest within the field of sports history extends to the history of knowledge expressed through the practices of sports.
Okan Keleş is a Research Assistant at Istanbul University, Faculty of Theology, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Department of Islamic History and Arts. He holds a Master’s degree from the same university and a Bachelor’s degree from Atatürk University. His academic interests center on Turkish Islamic Literature, Eastern languages, and literary history. Keleş has contributed to publications on topics such as Hagia Sophia and Sadi Shirazi. In 2025, he demonstrated significant international engagement as a speaker and participant at conferences in the UK, USA, France, and Italy.
Matthew Kirwin is a Division Chief at the State Department where he supervises a team of survey researchers. He is an expert on public opinion analysis and has extensive experience living and working in the Sahel. He has been a Professorial Lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University since 2018 was awarded the Bender Prize for excellence in teaching. He has a PhD in Political Science from Michigan State University, a Masters in African Studies from Ohio University and a Bachelors in International Studies from the Ohio State University. Other training include coursework at Sciences Po and with the State Department’s Secretary’s Leadership Seminar at the Harvard Business School. Matt served in the Peace Corps in Niger and is fluent in Hausa and French.
Michał Marcin Kobierecki, PhD, is an associate professor of political science in the Department of Political Theory and Thought, Faculty of International and Political Studies, University of Lodz, Poland. His research centers on international relations, specializing in areas such as sports diplomacy, the intersection of politics and sports, aviation diplomacy, nation branding, and public diplomacy. Author of numerous books, chapters, and scientific articles, including Sports Diplomacy: Sports in the Diplomatic Activities of States and Non-State Actors (2020) and Interstate Conflicts and the International Civil Aviation Organization: Depoliticization in Multilateral Diplomacy (2025). Principal investigator in research projects Consensual and branding role of sport in diplomatic activities of states and non-state actors (2016-2019) and Bilateral Relations Index: Quantitative analysis of interstate relations (2025-2029) funded by the National Science Center, Poland. Co-founder of the Polish Institute for Sports Diplomacy.
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a sports diplomacy scholar-practitioner expert in basketball diplomacy and Franco-American sports relations. Author of Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (Bloomsbury, 2023), “Views from the Embassy: the Role of the U.S. Diplomatic Community in France, 1914,” (U.S. Department of State, 2014), and The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010 (Lexington Books, 2013), her work on global sport has appeared with The Athletic, espnW, CNN International, The New Yorker, and more. Director of the FranceAndUS sports diplomacy project, she is a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport where she directs the institute’s sports diplomacy track.
Kashish Kunden is a doctoral researcher of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research focuses on U.S. Studies, particularly U.S. energy policy, strategic debates, and the geopolitical dimensions of energy transitions. She is a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship awarded by the Government of India. She has done her master’s in political science and her under graduation in Korean Studies.
Alizée Leclercq holds an MA in African Studies from SOAS University of London and a BA in International Studies from Leiden University. He worked as a Research & Reference Trainee at the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, contributing to research and documentation related to the history and governance of the Olympic Movement. His research interests focus on postcolonial politics, international institutions, and questions of political legitimacy and recognition, with particular attention to African contexts. His previous research has explored themes including language, identity, and gender-based violence in global and post-colonial settings. More recently, she had begun examining the role of international sport as a diplomatic arena through which sovereignty and recognition are performed.
Lidia Lesnykh holds a PhD from the University of Lausanne and currently works as a Postdoc in Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg within the SNSF-funded project “From Student Internationalism to Erasmus: Globalisation and Europeanisation of student life since 1945”. In the autumn semester of 2026, she will continue her research as the Basiliense Junior Fellow at the University of Basel.
Silvija Mitevska is the Managing Director of the NGO Sport Social Solutions, based in Skopje, North Macedonia. She is an alumna of the U.S. Department of State’s Global Sports Mentoring Program (Sports Diplomacy track). Her work is strongly grounded in sports diplomacy practice, having served as an Advisor to the Prime Minister of North Macedonia on sport-related issues. She is currently the Programme Director and a lecturer in the Master’s Programme in Sports Diplomacy at Hungarian University of Sports Science, and a PhD candidate in sports diplomacy at the University of Cologne.
Since October 2025, Barbora Mlyneková has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the
Department of 20th Century at the Institute of History of Slovak Academy of Sciences, v. v. i. .
Her research focusses on the history of women and their position in public life, with a specific
focus on their role in the sports movement in the first half of the twentieth century. In August
2025, she successfully defended her dissertation Women, Sport, and Society during the Interwar
Period in Banská Bystrica, in which she presented a previously unexplored area of historical
research, the position of sportswomen in the interwar Czechoslovak society, with an emphasis
on the city Banská Bystrica. Her research provides a new perspective on the interconnection of
gender, social and regional aspects of sporting life and contributes to a deeper understanding of
the role of women in the modernisation processes of the interwar period. She partially addressed
this topic in her diploma and bachelor´s theses, which focused on the beginnings of the Olympic
movement and the establishment of sport in central Europe.
Juan Manuel Montoro is a PhD candidate in Sports and Movement Sciences at the University of Lausanne. He holds a degree in Social Communication (Catholic University of Uruguay) and an MA in Semiotics (University of Bologna). Alongside his scholarly career, he has worked as an external consultant for government offices, NGOs and private companies in issues related to branding and corporate storytelling. He has also been a sporting journalist in Uruguay and he is frequently quoted in local media as a specialist in semiotics of sports. He currently teaches at the Catholic University of Uruguay.
Odile Moreau is a professor of contemporary history at Paul Valéry University in Montpellier and a researcher at CRISES and SIRICE, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focuses on the transformations in the southern Mediterranean since the 19th century and their interactions with Europe. The author of numerous books and articles, including Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Subaltern History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), her latest book, The Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century (Paris: Armand Colin, 2020), was awarded the Auguste Pavie Prize by the Académie des Sciences d’Outre-mer.
Alexandre Morteau completed a PhD in political science at Paris-Dauphine University, focusing on the construction of Olympic consensus. In this research, he explores how the Paris 2024 bid is constructed as a ‘non-issue’ by a coalition of actors from the sphere of power, against a backdrop of mistrust towards such projects in other European and North American countries. The Olympic project is also embedded within broader processes of restructuring public action and sports policies, which are increasingly geared towards event-driven dynamics, and within trends observable in the international sports arena, where growing entanglement with global economic actors leads to a strengthening of mechanisms for internalising (and neutralising) social criticism.
Laurence Munoz is a sports historian. Her work focuses primarily on Catholic sport and its relationship with the Olympic and sporting institutions. She is a senior lecturer at the Université du Littoral Cote d’Opale and a member of the Northern Research Unit on Sport, Health and Society (URePSSS), EA 73-69.
Isaac Ngola Mbuli is a leading Congolese researcher and academic specialising in International Relations. Currently based at the Faculty of Social, Administrative and Political Sciences at the University of Kinshasa (UNIKIN), he plays an active role in strategic thinking on the dynamics of the Department of International Relations.
Vincent Pasquini is an associate researcher and PhD candidate at the Centre Thucydide for international Affairs of the Panthéon-Assas university in Paris. He is a former international civil servant, and former head of international cooperation for Paris 2024
Lukáš Perutka is an associate professor at the Palacký University in Olomouc. He has teaching experience at the Institute of Technology in Monterrey, Mexico, the University of California, Berkeley, and Charles University in Prague. His research interests include triangular relations between the United States, Europe, and Latin America, or migration from Central Europe to the Americas. He published numerous articles and several monographs. These include Checoslovaquia, Guatemala y México en el período de la Revolución guatemalteca (Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, and Mexico in the Times of Guatemalan Revolution), and México y la sociedad checa, 1821-1939 (Mexico and the Czech Society, 1821-1939).
Diana Planida is a PhD candidate in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna (Italy) and Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). Her research examines authoritarian legitimation and the transnational circulation of “traditional values” in post-socialist Russia, with a focus on gender politics and cultural forms of political meaning-making.
Bogdan Popa, researcher at the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute in Bucharest, Romania (www.iini.ro). Doctorate in History with a thesis on Physical Education, Sport and Society in Interwar Romania (2009, published 2013). Current interest lies in the modernisation through sport in Romania at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Ivana Pranjić is a PhD. Candidate at the German Sport University Cologne with a focus on Sport Diplomacy in South East Europe. She is also a Research Associate at the German Sport University Cologne working on German Sports promotion as well as a Project Manager at the World Snowboard Federation. As an IOC Safeguarding Officer, she is also a member of the Working group on Safe Sport of the Croatian Olympic Committee.
Ph.D. in Modern European History and Director of the Department of Historical and Social Studies of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. His past work focused on the links between European, U.S. and Latin American eugenics in the first half of the twentieth-century. He explored this topic in Alexis Carrel and the Sociobiology of Decline (2006) and La eugenesia en América Latina (2009). His current research investigates the social and political life of sport, with a particular concentration on rugby as a site of ritual, identity formation, and transnational exchange. His investigations combine archival research, oral history, and cultural analysis to trace how clubs, federations, and state actors have used sporting practices to negotiate class, national belonging, and diplomatic ties across the twentieth century. His works on the subject– “Sports, Human Rights and Diplomacy” (International Journal of the History of Sport, 2025); El rugby (Buenos Aires, 2024), the three-part series on rugby in Argentina (World Rugby Museum, 4/3/2023, 6/5/2024, 6/24/2024), and “Le rugby argentin face au péronisme” (20/21 Revue d’histoire, 2021) synthesize institutional records, sports journalism, players’ memoirs, and state archives to rethink rugby’s public meanings. Reggiani is actively involved in supervising graduate research, organizing interdisciplinary seminars on physical culture, and collaborating on international projects that examine sport, memory, and politics in Latin America and beyond. He is also engaged in a multidisciplinary project that investigates the potential of rugby as a tool of social and cultural integration of aboriginal communities in Northern Argentina. More recently, he has joined the efforts of scholars, journalists and former players to recover and organize the lost archives of the Argentine Rugby Union.
Dr J. Simon Rofe is world leading expert in Sports Diplomacy; has advised numerous stakeholders across the sportscape and has a global research profile addressing sports diplomacy.
Simon Rofe is Associate Programme Director at Wilton Park, Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Leeds (2022- ), Reader and a Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Programme Director for the MA Leadership in Sports at the Institute for Sport Humanities, Visiting Professor at the Centre of Sports Law, Sports Policies and Sports Diplomacy of the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law (SLPD Centre). Alongside a team of European experts, Simon completed a role as a lead investigator for an Erasmus+ grant (1.3 million Euros) entitled ‘Towards a European Sports Diplomacy Strategy’. He is Senior Advisor to the UNESCO Chair in Sports Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and is the independent expert advisor for the UK’s Cross-Government International Sport Working Group. Simon has worked with numerous stakeholders from across the sporting and diplomatic realms including, UNESCO & UNITAR, foreign services, and government agencies from around the world, anti-doping organisations, bidding and organising committees.
Yves-Léandre Sanding Sanding
Yves Léandre Sanding holds a PhD in Political History and International Relations and is a research fellow at the Laboratory of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Ngaoundéré (Cameroon). His research focuses on international and transnational migration, cosmopolitanism among Cameroonian youth, and the diplomacy of sports celebrities.
Erik R. Scott is the John P. Black Professor of History at the University of Kansas, the Director of the university’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Editor of The Russian Review. He is the author of two books that examine the multiethnic Soviet Union in a global context: Defectors: How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War World (Oxford University Press, 2023) and Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire (Oxford University Press, 2016). He has also published several articles and book chapters, including one on the prominence of Georgian footballers on the Soviet national team for Robert Edelman and Christopher Young’s edited volume, The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 2019). He is currently working on a book-length history of the Soviet Union’s collapse and its aftermath from the perspective of sports, tentatively titled Endgames: The Collapse and Transformation of the Soviet Sports Empire. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Juan Antonio Simón has a PhD in Humanities. He is currently Lecturer in Sport History at the Faculty of Sciences for Physical Activity and Sport (INEF), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. President of the European Committee for Sports History (CESH). His work focuses principally on the history of sport in Spain, the links between football and international relations and on the history of mega sports events like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. Among others, he published “Football and International Relations under Francoism, 1937–1975”, Routledge (2025).
Sophia Solomon (PhD) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Sports Diplomacy at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and an assistant professor at the Department of Politics and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia. Sophia teaches courses about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Middle East Sports. As a comparative political scientist, Sophia specializes in political violence research across various fields, such as sports, military, civic society, international relations, and digital space. Recent publications focus on the Jewish Olympics (the “Maccabiah Games”), and her contemporary research explores sports commemoration following October 7.
Sébastien Stumpp is a senior lecturer (HDR) at the Faculty of Sports Science in Strasbourg and a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Cultural Studies (LinCS – UMR 7069). His research focuses on the political uses of sport in border regions and on regionalism in sport. His publications in this field include: Annexing Bodies. A Social and Political History of Sport in German Alsace (1871–1914) (Atlande, 2021).
Born and raised in Bulgaria, Dr. Nuri Korkmaz is Associate Professor of International Relations at Bursa Technical University in Türkiye. He obtained his PhD in Transborder Policies for Daily Life from the University of Trieste in Italy, MA and BA degrees in International Relations from Gazi University in Ankara, Türkiye. Previously, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen, a Marie Curie early stage researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium), visiting scholar at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the University of Texas at Austin (USA). His research interests are borders, minorities, nationalism in the Balkans, Black Sea Region and its strategic importance, European border management policies, nationalism and religion in the Middle East, European integration of the Balkan
Dr. Octavian Țîcu is a Researcher Coordinator at the Institute of History, Moldova State University and Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania. He served as Minister of Youth and Sports (2013) in the Republic of Moldova. Dr. Țîcu is author and coauthor of 25 books (published in Moldova, Romania, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands and Great Britain).
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.
Ali Emrah Tokatlıoğlu is a lecturer in International Relations at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Türkiye, where he has held his position since 2016. He completed both his graduate degrees at Istanbul University. His MA thesis (2013) examined the sport–politics relationship in interwar Türkiye, and his doctoral dissertation (2020) analysed the 1938 Physical Education Law within the framework of biopolitics. His scholarly work sits at the intersection of international relations, political history, and the politics of sport — a combination that remains rare within the Turkish academic context. His research focuses on sport as a political and diplomatic instrument, with particular attention to early Republican Türkiye, Olympism, biopolitics, and the institutionalization of sport within projects of nation-building and international visibility. He has also been involved in advisory processes related to contemporary sports policy. In addition to his research, he currently serves as Erasmus and Mevlana Exchange Programme Institutional Coordinator at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. He has prior experience as a basketball coach, and continues to be actively engaged in sports governance at the local level. He currently serves under the Çanakkale Provincial Basketball Representation as a Match Commissioner (Saha Komiseri) in official competitions and as a member of the Provincial Referee Board.
Dr. Bakary Traoré is an Ivorian specialist in contemporary history. After defending his doctoral thesis on the United Nations and armed conflicts in Africa (1956–2004), he joined the Department of History at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in 2010. There, he has held various academic and pedagogical responsibilities, particularly regarding curriculum organization, the implementation of the LMD (Bachelor-Master-Doctorate) system, student assessment, and academic supervision. His teaching focuses primarily on crisis, conflict, and war management by the OAU and the UN, conflict resolution in Africa, African regional organizations, peacekeeping, peace support operations, international relations, and major contemporary issues. His research interests cover peacekeeping and peacebuilding, civil wars in Africa, international organizations, and African political history. An author of numerous scholarly articles, Dr. Traoré has published work on peacekeeping operations in Africa, conflicts in Somalia, Ivorian-Burkinabe relations, the Algerian-Moroccan rivalry, the Western Sahara issue, DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration) in Côte d’Ivoire, African regional integration, and land dynamics in Kenya. His work reflects a sustained interest in African crises, conflict resolution mechanisms, and the continent’s geopolitical shifts.
Paul-Antoine Tugayé is a PhD student in the History of European Integration, supervised jointly by Professor Laurent Warlouzet and Professor Birte Wassenberg. He is enrolled at Sorbonne University’s Faculty of Arts and affiliated with the UMR SIRICE research laboratory. He is also a former archivist at the Jacques Delors Institute.
Heitor Valente is a Lecturer at Chengdu Sport University and a Representative of the International Sports Technology Association (ISTA). His academic and professional work focuses on global football governance, multi-club ownership structures, sports technology, and the international political economy of sport. Alongside his academic career, he has worked extensively in professional football as a consultant, performance analyst, and researcher, including executive roles in football operations and talent management. His research interests examine the institutional transformation of global football and the growing role of private actors in transnational sports governance.
Péter Vámos, DSc, is Research Professor at the Institute of History, ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, and Professor of Chinese History at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. His research focuses on the modern history and international relations of China, with particular emphasis on Sino-Hungarian relations during the Cold War and the history of Christianity in China. His major publications include Magyar jezsuita misszió Kínában [Hungarian Jesuit Mission in China] (Budapest, 2003); Kína mellettünk? Kína külügyi iratok Magyarországról, 1956 [Is China with Us? Chinese Diplomatic Records on Hungary, 1956] (Budapest, 2008); 新史料、新发现：中国与苏东关系 [New Sources, New Findings: Relations between China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe] (ed. with Huang Lifu and Li Rui) (Beijing, 2014); Magyar–kínai kapcsolatok, 1949–1989 [Hungarian–Chinese Relations, 1949–1989] (Budapest, 2020); and Beyond the Kremlin’s Reach? Eastern Europe and China in the Cold War Era (ed. with Jan Zofka and Sören Urbansky) (Routledge, 2025).
Dr. Alejandro Viuda-Serrano is a Senior Lecturer at the Universidad de Alcalá (Spain). The Vice-president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES) and former General Secretary of the European Committee for Sports History (CESH), his research is focused on Sports History during the Spanish Civil War and Francoism as well as on history of Olympism, education, press and gender.
Philippe Vonnard is a Senior FNS Research Fellow in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg, where he is preparing a habilitation thesis in environmental history. His research focuses on the social history of sport and leisure in Switzerland, as well as their internationalisation. Co-editor of the series ‘RERIS Studies in International Sport Relations’ and a member of the editorial board of the journal Sciences sociales & sport, he teaches the history of sport at the University of Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). For further information and a selection of his current research: https://www.unifr.ch/directory/fr/people/363239/b494e
Warjio is an Assistant Professor of Political History in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU), Medan, Indonesia. His research focuses on Indonesian political history, nationalism, and the intersection of diplomacy and cultural practices, with particular attention to the role of sports in shaping international relations during the Soekarno era. He was serve as Fellows for Study of United State Institutes (SUSI )for Scholars on U.S. Foreign Policy, University of Delaware, Delaware, USA (2022) and Fellows for Study of United State Institutes (SUSI )for Scholars on U.S. Foreign Policy at New York University, Florence, Italy (2023). Right now he serve as Research Fellow in Politics at The Future Institute, Kuala Lumpur (2024-now). Warjio just announced has been elected as invited speaker and will present a paper on Revolution, Slavery and Diplomacy at University of Massachussett, United States, July 2026.
Dr. Leslie Waters is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso. She received her PhD in 2012 from UCLA and specializes in twentieth century Central and Eastern European history with a particular interest in liminality in both space and time. Dr. Waters’s early work focused on the ways in which border and regime changes affected borderland communities in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Her current research takes a broader regional-transnational approach by considering the impact of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona on post-1989 geopolitical transformations. Coming at a moment of tremendous social, political, and economic change, the Barcelona Olympics became a conduit for nation-building, reconceptualizing sovereignty and citizenship, and expanding market capitalism to post-state socialist countries.
Chad Williamson is a Master’s candidate in National Security Policy at the RAND School of Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and holds a Master of Public Service from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. His research examines the institutional architecture of sports diplomacy, focusing on labor governance, professional athletes as non-state actors, and the role of sport in civic international engagement. He is completing a capstone project in partnership with the Stimson Center and the NFL Players Association on governance frameworks for athlete-led diplomatic initiatives. Williamson’s work draws on extensive qualitative engagement in and beyond sport. He has conducted in-depth interviews with over forty professional athletes as part of his research into sport, identity, and civic impact, and served as producer on the documentary BLACK BOYS, which explores how elite athletes and educators understand the cultural and social dynamics of sport in Black communities. His field experience also includes collaborating with sport organizations on program development and working with the Rwandan Basketball Federation on strengthening sport infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he was a secondary school teacher and coach, grounding his research in educational and community practice.
PhD in the history of contemporary international relations, Loukey Kouamé YOCOLY focuses his research on the complex dynamics of international cooperation and foreign policy. A recognized specialist in Euro-African relations, his work centers on Franco-South African diplomacy, with particular expertise in analyzing French foreign policy regarding the apartheid regime (1981–1995). Committed to the promotion and utilization of diplomatic sources, Loukey K. YOCOLY is an associate member of the Research Center for International and Atlantic History (CRHIA). Alongside his academic work, he leads major projects focused on preserving diplomatic archives and structuring the history of Ivorian diplomacy—themes central to modern discourse on soft power and a nation’s global influence. Driven by a commitment to innovation and the practical application of research, he founded the micro-enterprise “Clé de l’histoire.” This innovative venture applies diplomatic analysis expertise to the needs of institutions, organizations, and contemporary stakeholders, bridging the gap between rigorous scientific research and current geopolitical issues, including sports diplomacy and decentralized cooperation.
Yicai Yu is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Olympic Studies and Research, Shanghai University of Sport, China. Her research focuses on Olympic studies and sports diplomacy.
