Alan Bairner MA (Hons)(Edinburgh) PhD(Hull) PGCE(Moray House)
Professor of Sport and Social Theory
Contact details
Room: JB.2.06
Phone: +44 (0)1509 226338
Fax: +44 (0)1509 226301
Email: A.E.S.Bairner@lboro.ac.uk
Background
Alan Bairner is Professor of Sport and Social Theory. He studied Politics at the University of Edinburgh, gained a PGCE from Moray House College of Education and was awarded his PhD at the University of Hull for a thesis on the social and political theory of Antonio Gramsci. Prior to his arrival in Loughborough in 2003, he was Professor in Sport Studies at the University of Ulster where he had worked for twenty five years. He is the author of Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization. Europe and North American Perspectives (2001) and co-author (with John Sugden) of Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland (1993). He edited Sport and the Irish. Histories, Identities, Issues (2005) and is joint editor of Sport in Divided Societies (1999), The Bountiful Game? Football Identities and Finances (2005) and The Politics of the Olympics. A Survey (2010). Professor Bairner is Branch President of Loughborough University UCU and an elected member of University Senate.
Research and Teaching Interests
Professor Bairner’s current research focuses on the relationships between sport and national identity and between sport, leisure and urban spaces. He is also currently preparing a monograph on sport and politics for a Routledge series, ‘Frontiers of Sport’, for which he is series editor.
He is module leader for PSB015 Sport, Ideologies and Values and for PSC025 Sport, Celebrity and Place and contributes to the MSc Sociology of Sport programme.
Selected Publications
Books
- Wawryczek, I., Mazur, Z., Szewczyk, H. with Bairner, A., Oswajanie Innego. Obraz Polski i Polaków w prasie brytyskiej w latach 2002-2007, Gaudium, Lublin, Poland, 2011, ISBN 978-83-7548-050-4
Journal articles
- Bairner, A., “Soccer and Society in Eva Menasse’s Vienna”, Sport in History, 31 (1), 2011, 32-48, ISSN 1746-0263
- Bairner, A., “Urban walking and the pedagogies of the street”, Sport, Education and Society, 16 (3), 2011, 371-384, ISSN1357-3322
- Bairner, A. and Hwang, Dong-Jhy, “Representing Taiwan: international sport, ethnicity and national identity in the Republic of China”, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46 (3), 2011, 231-248, ISSN 1012 6902
- Yu, J.W. and Bairner, A., “The Confucian legacy and its implications for physical education in Taiwan”, European Physical Education Review, 17 (2), 2011, 219-230, ISSN1356-336X
- Tan, T. C. and Bairner, A., “Managing Globalization: The Case of Elite Basketball Policy in the People’s Republic of China”, Journal of Sport Management, 25(5), 2011 ISSN 0888-4773
Book chapters
- Bairner, A., “The City” in G. Ritzer and J. M. Ryan (eds) Concise Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2011, 59-61, ISBN 978-1-4051-8352-9
- Bairner, A., “Sport development, nations and nationalism” in B. Houlihan and M. Green (eds) Routledge Handbook of Sport Development, Sage, London, 2011, 31-41, ISBN 978-0-415-47996-7
- Hwang, Dong-Jhy, Bairner, A., Heitzmann, K. and Chiu, Wei-Cheng, “Sport, National Identity and Taiwan's Olympics History" in W. W. Kelly and S. Brownell (eds), The Olympics in East Asia, Volume 3, CEAS Occasional Publications Series, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 2011, 119-146, ISBN: 978-0-578-08098-7.
- Bairner, A., “Visible cities: researching leisure spaces, exclusion and banishment in New York”, in A. Ratna and B. Lashua (eds), Community and Inclusion in Leisure Research and, Sport Development, Brighton, LSA Publications, 2011, 19-31, ISBN 978 1 905369 25 6.
You can view a fuller publications list on the University Publications Database.
External Activities
Since 2003, Professor Bairner has been an invited lecturer at the University of Helsinki, the University of Texas at Austin, Queen’s University (Canada), the Marii Curie-Skłodowska University (Poland), Hitotsubashi University (Japan), the National Taiwan Sport University, the National Taiwan Normal University and at numerous British and Irish institutions as well as Irish studies groups in the English Midlands.
Professor Bairner is the founding editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science. He also serves on the editorial boards of Soccer and Society, the International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the International Journal of Sport Policy. He is an academic adviser to Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom, advises the Irish Football Association on community relations issues and, in 2009, was appointed as an advisor to the Taiwan Society of Sport Sociology.
Selected keynote presentations and invited lectures
- Bairner, A., ‘The Visible City and What Lies Beneath’, Leisure Studies Association annual conference, ‘Diversity and Equality in Leisure, Sport and Tourism’, Leeds Metropolitan University, July, 2010.
- Bowes, A. and Bairner, A., ‘Women, Sport and National Identities: on the neglect of national heroines of sport’, International Sociology of Sport Association world congress, Havana, Cuba, July, 2011.
- Bairner, A. and Shirlow, P.,‘Walls minus the shooting: sport, public art and conflict transformation in Northern Ireland’, European Sociological Association 10th conference – Social Relations in Turbulent Times, Geneva, Switzerland, September, 2011.
- Bairner, A., ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association: past, present, future’, Mansfield and Dukeries Irish association, October, 2011.