27 - 28 November 2025 The Football Collective Conference 2025

Football in a divided society: a personal account
Professor Alan Bairner (Loughborough University)

This keynote lecture is a personal account of football in Northern Ireland from 1978 until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. It is a story of watching old and new rivalries being fought out on the field of play, of discrimination, sectarianism and the particularly uneven treatment of one team, a successor to all intents and purposes of both Belfast Celtic and Derry City, and of a governing body that was for many years resistant to change and which, like other sport governing bodies, refused to accept that it could and should contribute to the creation of a more inclusive and harmonious society. It is based on one man’s experiences as a fan, a writer about sport in Northen Ireland and an adviser to the Irish Football Association, the Sports Council of Northern Ireland, the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure and Cliftonville Football Club.

Alan Bairner is Professor of Sport and Social Theory at Loughborough University having previously worked at Ulster University. He is a graduate in Politics from the University of Edinburgh and took his PhD in political though at the University of Hull. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, National Identities, and Soccer and Society. Recent publications include Vaczi. M. and Bairner, A. eds (2021) Sport and Secessionism, London: Routledge; Bairner, A., Chen, T-H and Chiang, Y. eds (2023) Sport in Taiwan. History, Culture, Policy. New York, Peter Lang; Bairner, A. Bairner, A. (2023) From Old Tom Morris to Andy Murray; an examination of the Scottishness of Scotland’s sporting celebrities, Celebrity Studies, 14 (3):350-365; Vaczi, M. and Bairner, A. eds (2024) Indigenous, Traditional, and Folk Sports: Contesting Modernities. London: Routledge; Inal, R. and Bairner, A. (2025). Football, diaspora, and Turkish Cypriot identity in London, Sport in Society. 28 (1): 142-160.

The panel will share insights about current and planned work around online hate from a number of stakeholder perspectives (players, media, research, international alliances) and discuss the challenges of managing this multi-layered issue.
Panel Members:

• Chair: Dr Gary Sinclair (Dublin City University, and Head of International Network of Online Harms in Sport);
• Dr Katie Liston (Ulster University, and Tackling Online Hate in Football/TOHIF);
• Jamie Hunt (Head of Digital, Sky Sports);
• Michael Carvill (Professional Footballers’ Association of Northern Ireland).

In keeping with the Football Collective’s mission to become ‘the academic voice of football’ and ‘bring critical debate to our game’, the 2025 Conference, organised by Ulster University’s Centre for Sport in Society, invites papers that build on and offer new directions in shaping critical agendas in football.

Informed by Karl Marx’s inspirational call to move beyond merely thinking about or interpreting the social world but rather to inform and transform it, the conference will provide opportunities for scholars, policy makers and practitioners to address key issues in football related (but not limited) to: hyper commodification; ownership; player welfare; health and wellbeing; identity politics; inequality and underrepresentation; discrimination and hate and to set out how these might be better understood and tackled.

As such, we welcome papers and panels that have an ‘applied’ dimension alongside those that seek to theorise topical, emerging and contentious issues in the game. Recognising that no single academic discipline should be prioritised in identifying, explaining and tackling issues in football, we particularly encourage papers and panels that stimulate and enhance interdisciplinary dialogue across the social sciences and humanities, performance sciences and business and management.

Belfast is an ideal location to reflect on football’s trajectory, past, present and future. It is home to the oldest football club in Ireland (Cliftonville) formed in 1879. Football in the city has long been implicated in the politics of division in Northen Ireland while also featuring as a site for cross community reconciliation.

As the broader peace process continues on its often-troubled trajectory, the game has not only come to reflect more progressive attitudes towards the ‘other’ but continues to be a locale where contested local and national identities still play out. The conference venue constitutes a physical and social space where both of these dynamics have been evident. Investment from wealthy new owners has reshaped the higher echelons of the domestic game in the city and across Northern Ireland with a shift to full-time professional status being eagerly pursued by leading clubs. New strategies and directions for the women’s game and youth football have emerged in recent years.

The city is also home to diverse fan allegiances that are local and transnational, aligning in particular to the old firm and some of the most storied clubs across England.

We welcome 15-minute papers, multimedia, or documentary presentations. We also welcome abstracts for posters and panels. As per previous Football Collective conferences, submissions may approach football from a variety of disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives, and might focus on topics including but not limited to:

• Women’s football
• fandom & football culture
• football and identity
• equality, diversity & inclusion
• discrimination and hate in football
• football tourism and heritage
• football and politics
• sustainability & corporate social responsibility
• football and sportswashing
• football (mega) events
• football and human rights
• gambling (practices and regulation)
• football violence
• football migration
• football academies
• football, refugees and belonging
• football and peacebuilding
• player welfare
• mental health and well-being
• psychological support strategies
• child rights in football
• Governance & regulation
• strategy, finance & accounting
• branding & marketing
• stadiums & spaces
• technology
• agents & recruitment
• football & law
• media & broadcasting, digital & social media.
• Officiating
• Football tactics and coaching

Abstracts should be sent to: football.collective@ulster.ac.uk with the subject header: “Abstract: Football Collective 2025" by 29 August 2025 and should:

1. Be written in English
2. Be sent in the form of a Microsoft Word document (.doc, .docx)
3. Not exceed 300 words
4. Include the title of the paper/poster/panel
5. Include the author/co-author(s) full name, title, position and institution
6. Include a brief professional biography (not exceeding 50 words)
7. An indication of preferred format (paper, multimedia, documentary or poster presentation)
8. If proposing a panel, please provide a brief outline of the theme/issues to be addressed (200 words); outline the proposed contributors (with a brief biography for each, not exceeding 100 words); state the preferred format (workshop, roundtable discussion, paper delivery).

It is intended that the event will lead to an edited collection as part of the Critical Research in Football series, published in association with Routledge.