Call for Papers | Geography and Sports Studies

Call for Abstracts for the webinar Geography and Sports Studies (March 2–6, 2026), jointly organized by the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Universidade Estadual Paulista and Instituto Federal de Brasília (Brazil), and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico)

Call for Papers

Sport is everywhere in social life, yet for decades it remained marginal in Geography. Early works were mostly descriptive, while only from the 1990s onward did scholars such as John Bale and Gilmar Mascarenhas begin to treat sport as an analytical object. Even today, its full recognition as a legitimate field of geographic inquiry is still emerging.

Research across the Social Sciences now employs categories like space, territory, scale, identity, and place. But too often these are used loosely or metaphorically, without engaging with critical geographic thought. This risks flattening their conceptual richness, even as it shows the potential of geography to illuminate sport’s social dynamics.

This call seeks to advance a critical geography of sport. We invite contributions that use geographic categories rigorously to analyze sport as a spatial, territorial, scalar, and identity-based phenomenon. The aim is to strengthen interdisciplinary dialogue, combining theoretical reflection with empirical research.

Inspired by Milton Santos’ warning against uncritical uses of spatial categories, we do not forbid metaphorical approaches, but seek debate on their potential and limits. By bringing together critical perspectives, we hope to consolidate a stronger geography of sport, capable of addressing commodification, resistance, inequality, gendered exclusions, and new forms of appropriation.
 

Useful link: Here