The aim of this midterm conference is to bring scholars, researchers, educators, students, professionals, and other groups interested in sports and physical activity to propose their works. The focus of this midterm conference lays in the challenges that sociology of sports and physical activity have to face to understand these new complex scenarios, the main issues we had to face, the successes, the criticalities and the lessons learned, the new horizons of our understandings of the social and cultural landscapes.

Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Teramo, Teramo (Italy)

25-26 March 2021

Argument

Recent crises, from the economic and migratory to the present covid-19 pandemic, have dramatically affected all areas of individual and collective life – and sport and physical activity are no exception.

In these contexts, sport bodies, practices and representations changed radically, for example with regard to: sport-health practice, the use of sports as a means of social inclusion for immigrants, professional sports events, their media coverage, the place of sport and physical activity in the welfare system, the relationship between body and sports’ practice, sports and physical activity’s representations.

The aim of this midterm conference is to bring scholars, researchers, educators, students, professionals, and other groups interested in sports and physical activity to propose their works. The focus of this midterm conference lays in the challenges that sociology of sports and physical activity have to face to understand these new complex scenarios, the main issues we had to face, the successes, the criticalities and the lessons learned, the new horizons of our understandings of the social and cultural landscapes.

Beyond this main theme, the conference will also feature a wide range of sessions to give the opportunity to share and discuss the latest research experiences, including (but not limited to):

• Sport, Migration and Forced Migration
• Methodological and Empirical Challenges on Sports and Physical Activity
• Sports and media: Mass and new publics
• Sport and Volunteering: Representations and Perspectives
• Sport and Bodies
• The sociology of sports, sports in sociology. A critical and reflective session
• Health promotion, health and education, sports and physical activity
• Social Fitness, new media and gamification
• Physical activity, sports and social health determinants

Format

The midterm Conference will be held as a hybrid meeting (both online and in presence)^[1] in Teramo (Italy), at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, 25-26 March 2021. It will be organised in collaboration with the AIS (Associazione Italiana di Sociologia), SISCC (Sociologia Cultura Comunicazione - Società Scientifica Italiana – to be confirmed) and other Italian academic actors in the area of sociology and sociology of sports.

Submission guidelines

Proposals should be sent in English to alessandro.porrovecchio@univ-littoral.fr

before January the 15th 2021.

They should include a title, the author(s) institutional affiliation and an abstract of 250 words. Proposals will be evaluated by the scientific committee, and authors will receive feedback before February the 1^st. Registration will be open until March the 1^st 2021.

Key dates

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 15th January 2021.

• Feedback on Abstract: Before 1st February 2021.
• Registration: Before 1st March 2021.

Fees

In presence:

• Members (ESA RN28, AIS, SISCC): 10 Euros young researchers (students, PhD, post-doc), 50 Euros permanent researchers.
• Non-Members: 20 Euros young researchers (students, PhD, post-doc), 70 Euros permanent researchers

Online:

• 0 Euros (no fees) young researchers (students, PhD, post-doc), 10 Euros permanent researchers.

Scientific committee ESA MIDTERM conference Teramo 

• Nico Bortoletto, University of Teramo, nbortoletto@unite.it
• Lucie Forté-Gallois, Université Toulouse III, lucie.forte@univ-tlse3.fr
• Enrico Michelini, TU Dortmund, enrico.michelini@tu-dortmund. de
• Stacey Pope, Durham University, stacey.pope@durham.ac.uk
• Alessandro Porrovecchio, University of the Littoral Opal Coast, alessandro.porrovecchio@univ-littoral.fr
• Kaja Różdżyńska, University of Warsaw, kaja.rozdzynska@gmail.com
• Giovanna Russo, University of Bologna, giovanna.russo6@unibo.it
• Loredana Tallarita, “Kore” University, loredana.tallarita@unikore.it

^[1] In case of a worsening of the pandemic, the conference will be carried out exclusively online.