Fandom and Development - Mentored Essays in Sports Studies

This book serves as a resource for and manifestation of a student-led research-informed approach to learning and teaching in higher education. It represents a novel model of supporting student writing and development. The majority of chapters are mentored and reviewed examples of student writing, as condensed versions of extended research projects, including undergraduate dissertations and masters and PhD theses. Chapters are framed within a Sport Studies context incorporating the key themes of Sport and British Fandom and Sport and International Development. Chapters in the former section relate to football fandom and identity in Wales, rivalry and violence in English football, status in elite British sport, and international football tournaments. Chapters in the latter section focus on a university sporting initiative at a Tibetan Village in India, a futsal-based social involvement programme in a Thai slum, Jewish and Arab integration in Israel via the Football for Peace project, football and the extra-national youths of Thailand and Myanmar, the American soccer coaching industry, and the application of Olympic values in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.