IDEA AND CONCEPT

After a very successful first edition of the Conference in 2012 the current event is to confirm the growing position of both Poland and East-Central Europe on the map of football-related scientific discourse. The Conference will focus on football as an important social institution playing a rising role in various fields of human activity.

The main idea behind the conference is to exchange thoughts and thus contribute to the increased knowledge among scientists specialising in football, as well as to examine the connections between football and politics or broader - social sciences.
The conference will traditionally consist of panels, each corresponding to one unit within the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations. Thus, the parts will be devoted to:

• political science and security studies (Institute of Political Science),
• international relations (Institute of International Relations),
• sociology and social policy (Institute of Social Policy),
• European and regional studies (Institute of European Studies).

​During each session speakers will discuss main results of their research and participants will be invited to come forward with their comments and ideas in order to help shape a proper understanding of the role of football in various areas of social life. The full list of topics is available in the Call for Abstracts section of the conference wbesite.

FORMULA

​Serving as an introduction to the discussions, the opening lecture in each panel will focus on football as an object of scientific research and will introduce its social and political aspects. Next, specific examples of scientific research in the area of football will be presented. The project team will examine the assumptions, methodology and expected results of their work.​​In order to ensure greater knowledge exchange and discussions, the conference panels will be organised in a manner described below. The panels will be chaired by moderators – representatives of particular institutes at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations. After a brief introduction to the panel’s topic, the moderator will introduce the keynote speaker and invite him or her to present their lecture. The main lecture will be followed by co-lectures delivered by other speakers. One lecture should last no longer than 15-20 minutes and the moderator will see to it that this is observed. Lectures should be accompanied by a multimedia presentation. After all panel lectures are delivered, the participants will be invited to take active part in the debate.

NEXT STEPS

The presentations of all conference speakers are planned to be published on the project’s website. The output of the conference will be also published in an international peer-reviewed journal and as a peer-reviewed monograph. Presented research results will be broadly disseminated by Polish and European research centres.
Following the second edition of the Conference on football at the University of Warsaw, the next step envisaged is to develop a scientific network devoted to football, which will bring together researchers interested in football from across Europe. The emergence of an scientific association of football researchers should also be considered.