November 16-18 2022 RESPONSE hosted the conference “The 14th annual conference of the Transnational Working Group for the Study of Gender and Sport”. We had three great days consisting of research dissemination and networking.
The conference is an international yearly meeting where the most recent research on sports, gender and equality is disseminated. This year we gathered 60 participants from 12 different countries and 24 universities. Altogether this resulted in 15 parallel sessions with 50 paper presentations, and with that, this year’s conference was the biggest until now. The topic for this year’s conference was “Emerging issues and alternative futures for gender and sport”, and the presentations covered topics such as:
- Abuse and violence in sports
- Equity, policy and governance
- Social media and digital technology
- LGBTQ+ (queering sport)
- Female coaches and the coaching role in elite sports for women
- Sports physiology and female health
- E-sports
- Social issues
The conference opened with a great dance performance by children and youths from the local dance group “Pias Ballet Studio”. Afterwards, Cecilie Høj Anvik (Vice Dean of Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences), gave the guests a warm welcome and introduced Nord University. Anne and Siv followed by presenting RESPONSE and what we do. Then it was time for the first keynote speaker, Daniel Alsarve from Örebro University, who held an interesting presentation on «Sport, gender and violence: Changes and continuities, connections and complexities». That was followed by three parallel sessions with presentations. In the evening we met at Bådin Brewery in the city centre for a quiz, pizza and socializing.
Thursday was eventful both academically and socially. Throughout the day we had 9 parallel sessions in total. In between those, our second keynote speaker Sepandarmaz Mashreghi from Malmö University presented the topic “Decoloniality and sport studies”. After a full day on campus, some of the conference participants went to Pust Bodø for sauna and swimming, and others got a relaxing hour of yoga with Frida. In the evening we all med for a three-course conference dinner at Bølgen & Moi.
The last day of the conference started with paper presentations, before we got a practitioner perspective from Gro-Marie Thomassen in Bodø Sports Council, presenting the topic “Sports for All”. She told us about different initiatives the sports council and sports teams in the community do to include as many children as possible in sports. The conference ended with awarding of prizes for the best presentations of PhD- and Masters students. Here, Yvonne Schüpbach (University of Bern) og Therese Hareide Holstad (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) was awarded and got gift vouchers sponsored by Routledge.
We look back on some great days as hosts for the conference, and the members of RESPONSE agree that organizing an event like this gladly can be done again. We are very grateful for all who travelled to Bodø to attend and for all their contributions both academically and socially.
