Report: York Festival of Ideas 2026

 

On Saturday 6th June we had the great pleasure to host North East subculture hero Robert Nicholls (lead singer of Shrug, editor of England's longest-running football club fanzine 'Fly Me to The Moon' and internet message board, and sport heritage/history/archaeology practitioner to name just a few things from his varied career).

The audience was treated to Rob's knowlegeable (and at times amusing) take on football stadiums, heritage projects, and the real and virtual spaces and places that help to define football.

The 30 minute presentation was followed by a further 30 minutes of audience questions, which led to some finer details and humorous anecdotes, and afterwards attendees had the opportunity to take home samples of Rob's football zine.

This event was back-to-back with another presentation by our Uni of York colleague Jess Hargreaves, all about the use of statistics in modern football. Two very different angles on 'the people's game' but together made for a highly interesting couple of hours.

Thank you to Rob and to the Festival Team for excellent organisation and hospitality. See you again!

Reflections on the 2018 Soccer Mad Boffins Conference Tour

What a summer! Amazing weather, a fantastic World Cup, and a veritable plethora of Soccer Mad Boffins public talks and academic lectures to fill in the time we weren't watching England progress to the semi-finals.  Here is a recap and reflection as we remember it...




June 1st 'England 1966, USA 1994 and the World Cup: Thoughts on populism, the popular and public indifference' 

Populism and the Leisure Spectacle: A BSA Leisure & Recreation Study Group Workshop 

Venue: University of Bath

This British Sociological Association workshop combined contemporary history with event management, cultural studies and theory with studies of national cases, the binding theme being the whys and wherefores of the populist profile of particular sport and leisure practices and cultural formations.

The event included presentations and panels discussion with experts also including Professor Alan Tomlinson, author/academic/broadcaster David Goldblatt, Michael Willams, and Brian Clift.

Soccer Mad Boffins' Alex Gillett opened the day with a consideration of the 1966 football World Cup finals tournament, hosted and won by England. Drawing upon his work with co-author Kevin Tennant he presented data on the almost serendipitous way in which the British government lent financial support to the event, the disappointment of those English regions beyond London for whom the anticipated tourist bonanza was a washout if not disaster, and the small scale of commercialisation of the product that nevertheless hinted at the later, media-generated and sponsor-based global commodity that the World Cup has become. The broader context was informed by Flyvbjerg’s four sublimes of the mega-project, to which Alex and Kevin’s research has brought an ethnographic and qualitative dimension as applied to the study of event history and business history. These themes and approaches stimulated lively discussion on just how we understand contemporary history and the lived meanings of iconic cultural moments in our past. He also looked at how the 1994 World Cup in the United States sought, through targeted marketing strategies aimed at both established and potential audiences, to popularize the game in the crowded US market dominated by the Big 4 (American Football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey).

June 12th 'The Business of World Cup Football'

co-presented with Greg Dyke (former Chairman of the Football Association)

Venue: York Festival of Ideas, The King's Manor, York

It was our great honour to co-present this event with Greg Dyke, which was attended by a large enthusiastic audience on a warm summer's evening.  We began by presenting from our research of the 1966 and 1994 FIFA World Cups contextualising it with information about more recent and future events, such as Brazil, Russia, Qatar and USA 2026.  Then followed a round table discussion chaired by Greg, who then reflected on his own experiences of being FA Chairman and Director General of the BBC.  The audience posed some excellent questions which we were delighted to answer and everyone enjoyed hearing Greg's views on football and its broader social impact as well as the business side. There were some predictions of England's likely performance in the World Cup which were superseded by Gareth Southgate and his team's performance in Russia!   Two days after the presentation, the 2018 World Cup kicked off. To tie-in with the event our podcast on the story of football was released and we hope to participate in the Festival of Ideas in 2019 - watch this space!  


June 20th 'Project Managing and Marketing the Soccer World Cup: 1966 and 1994'

Aston Organizational History Workshop

Venue: Aston Business School 

A few days after the World Cup kicked off we contributed to this workshop organized by Professor Stephanie Decker, Head of Research at Aston Business School.  This was a great venue because of its links to the 1966 World Cup and the event included several presentations covering a range of organizational history topics from manufacturing to finance.  We must add the catering was excellent - the samosas and cake were particularly enjoyable.  Over the course of one hour we presented findings from our paper accepted for the International Journal of the History of Sport as well as findings from our Project Management Journal paper and book Foundations of Managing Sporting Events.  Our research was very well received and we look forward to returning to Aston at the BAM2019 Conference where we will further develop the theme of our Special Interest Group, Management and Business History.



June 22nd Poster Presentation: 'Using Archival Research in University Teaching'

Venue: University of York Teaching and Learning Conference 

We made our first ever poster presentation on home turf at the University of York Teaching and Learning Conference.  Our poster was about archival research in teaching and served as an excellent warm-up for our appearance at the BAM 2018 annual conference.  See below!



July 9th - 13th Critical Acclaim for Soccer Mad Boffins!

With the World Cup well under way we were able to compare our predictions to reality which created some fun on this blog with several articles which went viral and even caught the attention of Soccernomics author Stefan Szymanski who described it as 'a teachable moment'.

This blog was also considered worthy of archiving by the British Library in the  UK Web Archive, which preserves specially selected websites that represent different aspects of UK heritage on the web, as well as important global events.



July 12th - 13th Management History Research Group workshop 

Venue: Riddle's Court, 322 Lawnmarket in Edinburgh

Arriving in Edinburgh we had the pleasure of watching England crash out of the World Cup in the semi-final in a pub full of Scotland supporters! A traditional Scottish deep fried supper helped ease the pain. The MHRG was a major success and the venue was fantastic as this photo depicts.  Our paper developed the poster presentation about using archives and was well received by a prestigious panel of professors.




September 4th-6th 'Management and Business History Track' of the British Academy of Management Annual Conference

Venue: University of the West of England, Bristol

The start of September took us to the historic port town home of Triphop, Banksy and the British aircraft industry. We opened the conference with a dinner in the former Bristol Stock Exchange, now an Indian restaurant. The ornate surroundings complimented the excellent meal. On the first day of activities we delivered a Professional Development Workshop on publishing academic books, drawing on our experience and expertise as editors of the Emerald series Frontiers of Management History. We met many impressive and creative new authors and hope to work with at least some of them soon. On Day 2 we presented a full paper version of our work previously presented at the MHRG and University of York poster session (see above).  By now we had used the constructive feedback to craft a developed paper which we hoped to publish.  Our thanks to the esteemed audience for all their comments and suggestions.  In our roles as Special Interest Group committee members we were also involved in chairing sessions and mentoring early career academics and we thoroughly enjoy contributing to the development of our academic field.  The main conference dinner was held at Aerospace Bristol where we got to walk through Concorde and enjoy the Concorde museum then enjoy a selection of wines and food courses at a table situated underneath the aircraft, whilst listening to Jonathan Dimbleby perform an on-the-couch interview with Micheal Eavis the promoter of Glastonbury Festival.  We were pleased that BAM brought a bit of aeronautic and creative industry business histories to the heart of its conference!

FREE SOCCER MAD BOFFINS PODCAST

The university of York and York Festival of Ideas have released their new 'Story of Things' podcast series.  which includes an episode by Dr Kevin D. Tennent and Dr Alex G. Gillett (aka The Soccer Mad Boffins) and Dr Alex Jackson (from the National Football Museum, England).

Indeed, the series promises a broad and fascinating selection of podcasts.  According to a spokesperson for University of York "Archaeologist, Dr Penny Spikins returns for a second series of The Story of Things podcast, where she is exploring research projects in sporting events, voice recognition, bee conservation, and how the police force are tackling issues of mental health".

Download the podcast for free using this link:

Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-story-of-things/id1246158465?mt=2

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-story-of-things


Produced by Philippa Geering of Overtone Productions,our episode entitled 'The Story of Football' clocks in at around 18 minutes and focuses on the FIFA World Cup as a sport mega-event. We focus in particular ion the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and contextualize it by talking the listener though football history more generally, ideas about sport mega-events as mega-projects and their associated opportunities and threats.  We also visit the National Football Museum and Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester, and join some University of York students for a game of football.

L-R: Philippa Geering (Overtone Productions) interviews Dr Alex Jackson (National Football Museum), Dr Alex G. Gillett andDr Kevin D. Tennent (Soccer Mad Boffins)

The podcast ties-in with our appearance at the York Festival of Ideas on June 12th, where we will give a talk entitled 'The Business of The World Cup' which will be chaired by the former Chairman of the Football Association, Greg Dyke.  Tickets are free but you must pre-book one to gain admittance on the evening: http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2018/talks/business-world-cup-football/


Read more about the podcast series here:

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/features/2018/story-of-things-podcast-returns/


Read more about York Festival of Ideas here:

http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2018/

Contribution to the website of Montrose FC

Soccer Mad Boffin Dr Alex Gillett has contributed an article about his Grandfather, footballer Giles 'Gil' Gillett, to the website of Scottish club Montrose FC.

After national service with the BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) Giles played professionally in the late 1940s/early 1950s, initially with English team Middlesbrough before transferring back to his native Scotland where he spent two seasons with Leith Athletic before signing for Montrose.

Included on the website are digitized archival documents including a copy of Giles' Montrose contract and player registration, as well as a match programme (Montrose vs Heart of Midlothian FC) and photographs, all of which may be of interest to people researching Scottish or post- WW2 football

The article can be found by clicking here.

Introducing The New Signings: Soccer Mad Boffins

Alex (left) and Kevin (right) signing their publishing contracts.  Photo taken by: Chris Purdham 

We are very pleased to announce that we have now signed publishing contracts to have our paper 'Beer and the Boro - a Perfect Match!' included in the forthcoming book 'Brewing, Beer and Pubs: A Global Perspective'.

Our chapter is co-authored with Fred Hutchinson (Teesside University) and the book will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in March 2016. It will include contributions from many great writers and it will be edited by a great team - Ignazio Cabras (Northumbria University, UK), Prof David Higgins (Newcastle University, UK) and Prof David Preece (Prof Emeritus, Teesside University). 

Our paper, as you might gather from the rather punning title, is about Middlesbrough Football Club and its relationship with breweries as sponsors and suppliers to its stadium.  In the paper, we place particular focus on the 1980s - and what happened before and since that time.

You can read all about the book here.

Stay tuned for more exciting news regarding publication plans for even more of our research - in particular the work we have been doing on the 1966 FIFA World Cup.