By Rob Cuthbert

“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

(Bill Shankly, former manager of Liverpool Football Club)

The SRHE 2018 Research Conference in December was full of academics with a passion which Bill Shankly would have recognised. Perhaps not all the kind of people who would have taken their partner on a birthday outing to see Rochdale reserves on a rainy weekday evening, but certainly many of the kind of people who went home from the conference for a Christmas they would fill with reading, writing and reviewing. Academia and football are both common pursuits worldwide; can we make something of the parallels? Continue reading →