Tuesday 18 August 2015

Soccer Mad Boffins Summer World Tour

Following our success at the University of York CEGBI/CSWL summer conference (see previous post) - we have in recent weeks also had our research on referees discussed in the 'Uses of the Past: History and Memory of Organizations' Professional Development Workshop at the Academy of Management (AoM) in Vancouver, Canada.  Here we discussed the ethnographic character of the archives generated by referees as they travelled around the world, and how we can use them to document the development of refereeing as a profession.  Vancouver is of course fresh from hosting the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup and FIFA signs were still on display!  Kevin also visited the Olympic Village from the 2010 Winter Olympics, perhaps one of the better legacy sites from an Olympics. This is the second Olympic venue visited by a Soccer Mad Boffin this year.  Alex visited the Barcelona Olympic Venue and village in January.

Next month we will be attending the Management and Business History Track at the British Academy of Management (BAM) in Portsmouth, where we will discuss the findings from our 1966 FIFA World Cup Project. We are working on bigger plans for outputs from this, so watch this space!