As an enduring and almost ubiquitous part of modern life, sport has a powerful capacity to touch individuals and societies around the world in ways that traditional forms of diplomacy and diplomats rarely can. Sporting competition always carries social and political messages for these audiences; at times these are simple even vulgar,  at times complex, subtle and mixed. Sport’s modes of operation - not only as participation and mass entertainment, but as an increasingly global business generating economic benefits for and linkages between a broad range of actors – have deep consequences for the ambitions, practices and outcomes of diplomacy.  Sport is also a metaphor for competing identities within polities at all levels. Nowhere has the diffusion and redistribution of political and economic power in our globalizing world had more visibility than in international sport.

After many years of relative neglect, the realm of sport diplomacy is attracting renewed scholarly attention. The colloquium is deliberately aimed at welcoming colleagues and students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

The colloquium has the broad aim to explore the relationship between sport and diplomacy at all levels. It does so under the following suggested themes (other suggestions are welcome):

• Sport and Conflict & Conflict Resolution
• Sport and Non-State Actors
• International Organisations and Sporting Federations
• Sport, Development and Diplomacy
• International Sport, Money and Global Media