New Research Publications

The soccer mad boffins are very pleased to announce that we have co-authored two exciting new book chapters, one about the history of UK leisure centres and the other a methods paper about doing archival research:

Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2023. Evolution of Public Services: The Case of UK Leisure Centres in the Late 20th Century. In Collective Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary European Services Industries: A Long Term Approach,, Perez, PF and San Roman, E (eds)., Emerald Publishing, pp.61-76.

Tennent, K.D. and Gillett, A.G., 2023. How to research in an archive. In Handbook of Historical Methods for Management (Decker, S., Foster, W.M., Giavonnoni, E., (eds), Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.104-120.

The UK leisure centres chapter is a development of our award winning developmental paper presented at the British Academy of Management annual conference a couple of years ago. The book it is included in is the latest in the Frontiers of Management History series that we are the editors of.

The methods chapter is based on our own experience of archival research for organisational history.

ROSES: Evolution of UK Leisure Centres in the 20th Century

On 20th August we co-presented a presentation to University of Reading's ROSES (Reading Online Sports Economics Seminars) on the development of leisure centres in the UK in the mid/late 20th century.

We really enjoyed doing the talk and are very grateful to Professor James Reade and the Department of Economics at University if Reading. We are also very grateful to everyone who attended or who emailed us with comments and questions.

ROSES is a fantastic weekly seminar series and we urge you to attend their online Friday afternoon seminars if you get the opportunity.

Here is a weblink to a recording of the seminar for those who wish to view it:

Come and see the Soccer Mad Boffins in Middlesbrough

We are pleased to announce that we will be presenting our research on Middlesbrough Football Club at the Urban Leisure Conference organized by the British Society of Sports History's North East and Yorkshire Network on Saturday November 14th, at Teesside University.  Our paper reports on the relationship between Middlesbrough FC and its local authorities in the 1980s and draws on previously unpublished archival sources as well as our forthcoming book chapter and world cup book. Registration will be at 10am and at 10.30am there will be a keynote by the esteemed football writer Harry Pearson.  Our presentation will be at 11.45am. The event is free to attend and you can book here - http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/whats_on/events_details.cfm?event_id=7824 - We look forward to seeing you there!