What is the place of sport in our lives? As we watch sport events on television, as we shout as fans or strain as participants, we can see the importance of engaging with and understanding sport’s place in society. The question in the modern world is complex, and demands inter-disciplinary approaches to its solution. Sport in modernity is an everyday part of leisure lives, an aspirational physical activity or something that gives people a sense of belonging. Sport can be a vehicle for social and economic development, yet the economic and political formations of globalisation and modernity bring the spectre of contracts, deals, profits and the pursuit of glory at the expense of everything good about sport.

This conference, the third global conference on Sport held by IDN, aims to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines – sociology, sport development, cultural studies, philosophy, history, political studies, urban studies, management and marketing, geography, and psychology and sport science – who are interested in exploring sport’s social, political and economic places and spaces. We are interested in sport’s histories, sport in the here and now and sport’s futures. The project is for cheerleaders of sport, critics of sport, and all those in-between who would like to make a contribution to this inter-disciplinary approach to understanding sport.