About the award
Co-sponsored by ISSA and SAGE
The aim of the International Sociology of Sport Association’s (ISSA) Graduate Paper Award is to recognize the scholarship of outstanding graduate students in the international community of sociology of sport. The award will be granted to a scholarly paper, authored by a graduate student, which is deemed by a panel of judges to demonstrate considerable originality, critical and analytical ability, and to be of the highest quality from among those submitted.
Call for papers
The aim of the International Sociology of Sport Association’s (ISSA) Graduate Paper Award is to recognize the scholarship of outstanding graduate students in the international community of sociology of sport. The award will be granted to a scholarly paper, authored by a graduate student, which is deemed by a panel of judges to demonstrate considerable originality, critical and analytical ability, and to be of the highest quality from among those submitted.
Deadline passed
Notes for Authors
- The student must be registered for masters or doctoral level graduate work at the time their paper is submitted.
- It must be a single-authored paper.
- The student must be a member of ISSA at the time their paper is submitted.
- The committee will accept only one submission per author.
- Previous winners are not eligible.
- A paper cannot be considered for the ISSA GPA award at the same time that it is submitted for another award.
- While congress registration fees for the winner are included in the prize, in-person participation in 2023 ISSA Congress to be held in Ottawa, Canada is not mandatory.
- The winning author will receive an ISSA sponsored prize of membership in ISSA for 24 months.
- The winning author will receive a SAGE Publisher sponsored prize of £150 worth of books.
- The panel of judges may also give up to two honourable mentions. Graduate students receiving honourable mentions will have their papers accepted for presentation or distribution at the 2023 ISSA conference. Free registration to the Congress is also included in the prize.
- The name of all winning authors will be posted on the ISSA website and publicised in the next available bulletin.
- Candidates are to submit a 3000-6000 word (excluding references) scholarly paper on a topic that is of interest to the international sociology of sport academic community.
- Papers with a text of over 6000 words will not be considered.
- Authors are to submit a cover page that contains the title of the paper and the full contact information of the author.
- The author’s identity must not be recognizable in the text.
- Authors must be graduate students at the time the paper is submitted.
- Authors must be members of ISSA at the time the paper is submitted.
- Authors are to submit a letter, signed by their academic advisor, verifying graduate student status.
- Authors are to follow a style consistent with the publication guidelines for the International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
- Papers should be submitted electronically (in Microsoft Word format attachment) to the Graduate Paper Awards Committee Chair, Parissa Safai.
- All papers should be emailed to psafai@yorku.ca
- The winner will be notified by no later than May 1, 2023.
ISSA reserves the right not to grant an award in the event that none of the submitted papers meet the award criteria.
ISSA Graduate Paper Award Winners
2022 - Tübingen, Germany
2020 - Not Vina del Mar, online
Bethany Geckle (University of Otago)
“Failure for the Future: Queering Skateboarding and Making Space”
2019 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Froujke Smit (Utrecht University)
“Welfare and child rights of young commercially sponsored action sport athletes.”
2018 - Lausanne, Switzerland
2017 - Taoyuan City, Taiwan
Engela van der Klashorst (University of Johannesburg)
“Employment through sport: Ignoring the socio-economic rights of youth leaders working in sport for development initiatives on grass root level in South Africa”
2016 - Budapest, Hungry
Minhyeok Tak (University of Otago, New Zealand)
“Too big to jail: Match-fixing, institutional failure and contemporary sports betting.”
2015 - Paris, France
Mark Norman (University of Toronto, Canada)
“Sport in the underlife of a total institution: Social control and resistance in Canadian Prisons.”
Previous Graduate award winners
- 2014 (Beijing, China)
Yoske Washiya (University of Toronto, Canada) Paper title: “7 days in Srebrenica: Seeking the reality of playing together in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina”. - 2013 (Vancouver, Canada)
Kristi Tredway (University of Maryland, USA) Paper title: “Serena Williams: Gender, Race and (the Perception of) Violence in Women’s Professional Tennis.” - 2012 (Glasgow, Scotland)
Gavin Weedon (University of British Columbia, Canada) Paper title: “The writing’s on the firewall: The possibilities of open access journal publishing for a public sociology of sport.” - 2011 (Havana, Cuba)
Kyoung-yim Kim (University of Toronto, Canada)Paper title: “Glamorous Sojourners: Korean Women Golfers’ Transnational Mobility and Flexibility.” - 2010 (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Koji Kobayashi (University of Otago, New Zealand) Paper title: “Globalisation, Corporate Nationalism and Nike Advertising: Representing Bukatsu to Negotiate the Global/Local Nexus in Japan.” - 2009 (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Fumihiro Kaneko (Hitotsubashi University, Japan) Paper title: “Partnerships in Sport Policy under New Labour: The Case of Community Sports Network in the Delivery System for Sport in England.” - 2008 (Kyoto, Japan)
Sarah Gee (U of Otago, New Zealand) Paper title: “Sport, Promotional Culture and the Crisis of Masculinity: The National Hockey League’s ‘Inside the Warrior’ Advertising Campaign.”
Committee Chair: Dr. Kim Schimmel - 2007 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Ulrik Wagner (U of Copenhagen, Denmark) Paper title: “The World Anti-Doping Agency and the challenges for political steering.”
Committee Chair: Dr. Elizabeth Pike - 2006
No award was presented given that the ISSA Congress was held in conjunction with the ISA World Congress of Sociology in Durban, South Africa. - 2005 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Simon Darnell (University of Toronto, Canada) Paper title: “Race and Knowledge Production within the Global Sport Development Project”
Committee Chair: Dr. Elizabeth Pike