Completed PhDs
Hemker, Lena (2023)
Working Title: Modern sports – a trade-off between societal and economic influencing factors
Research period: 2017 2023
Content
The last few years saw a considerable increase in the number of the so-called modern sports, both nationally and internationally. The interests and expectations of various stakeholder groups (e.g. sports societies, the media, economic players) as well as the consideration of numerous economic and societal factors seem to play increasingly important roles when introducing and developing modern sports. Companies investing in such sports by means of tailored marketing and sponsorship strategies, sports associations and clubs considering to include them in their activities and the media coining society’s perception of these sports are only a few examples of the developments outlined above. Additionally, considering the societal dimension the question arises to which extent modern sports are likely to represent a change of the society’s understanding of sports.
This dissertation aims to carry out an in-depth analysis of modern sports with a focus on the impact of societal and economic factors on their development. Thereby, a stakeholder approach will be taken. By critically reviewing the potential trade-off between the two influences the researcher intends to expand and broaden the field of research on modern sports. So far, this area of research was mostly concerned with evaluating the specific characteristics and the development of modern sports in comparison to traditional sports.
Moustakas, Louis (2023)
Title: Together on the Field, United off of it? Defining, Mapping and Evaluating Sport and Social Cohesion Programmes in Europe
Research Period: 2020 2023
Content
Given the growing levels of change and diversity in Europe, encouraging social cohesion is seen as increasingly important for the stability, growth and solidarity across the continent. Indeed, at the national and European levels, numerous governmental and civil society actors have emphasised the importance of social cohesion and its different components. Despite the increasing activity and recognition in the area of sport and social cohesion, there remain important gaps in our knowledge concerning sport and social cohesion programming in Europe. This gap manifests itself in three ways. Firstly, we have limited knowledge about the types of organisations delivering these programmes and their approaches. Secondly, even with the plentitude of formal definitions of social cohesion, these definitions do not reflect the actual understanding of practitioners and participants at the local level. Finally, there remains a lack of evidence regarding the impact of these programmes. In response to these gaps, this thesis wishes to understand and map the structure, approaches, local definitions, and outcomes of sport and social cohesion programmes. Using these different elements, this thesis ultimately seeks to answer the following: what is the overall process that leads to social cohesion outcomes in sport programmes in Europe?
Choi, Joohyun (2022)
Title:Titel: Leisure Sports Development in South Korea since 1961: The Impacts of Culture, Technology, Socioeconomics, and Politics
Researchperiod: 2017 2022
Content
This study investigates leisure sports development in Korea since 1961 through four lenses: culture, technology, socioeconomics, and politics. Many scholars have studied leisure and sports in their respective fields, but leisure sports have received less attention due to the ambiguity of terminology.
Furthermore, most leisure and sports research has been conducted primarily in Western countries. As a result, this study chose Korea among Asian countries with limited research data, which has experienced rapid modernization. This study aims to determine at what point and for what reason leisure sports form its trends in Korea. The study used systems theory as a conceptual framework to understand leisure sports development in Korea. This study is based on qualitative research using a variety of data collection methods. Big data analysis and government statistical data were used as quantitative resources. In contrast, literature data, such as government reports, academic papers, video data, semi-structured interviews, and digitized newspaper archives, were used as qualitative resources. This study revealed the following results:
- Koreans had settled the leisure sports culture as a part of their lives in just three decades.
- The technological industry-oriented economic development played an essential role in the emergence and popularization of new types of leisure sports such as e-sports and sports simulators.
- Koreans strive for maximal leisure sports activity in a limited amount of time and prefer low-cost and easy-access leisure sports.
- The government's sports policy is shifting towards leisure sports as Koreans' quality of life improves and leisure sports grow more popular.
This study concludes that Korean society has completed the emergence, expansion, and settlement of leisure sports culture in three decades that has been carried out for more than 100 years in Western countries. Accordingly, this study argues that leisure sports development in Korea has altered and formed dynamically. The investigation recommends that a comparison examination of leisure sports development with countries with comparable economic levels to Korea can be a topic that clearly shows the features of Korea's leisure sports development.
Bauer, Katrin (2022)
Between scientification and application orientation:
Evaluation research and actor structures in the context of 'Sport for Development'.
Research period: 2014 to 2022
Date of the disputation: 14.09.2022
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Katja Siefken
Content
With the establishment of a sector project "Sport for Development" in the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in early 2013, German development policy set a sign for change and reorientation. The "Sport for Development" sector has become an overarching theme in German development cooperation (DC) with numerous links to various development policy goals of the German government. It has been recognized that, in addition to its important use in education, sport can also be combined with projects in the areas of health promotion, violence prevention, gender equality, good governance, inclusion or even the environment. The aim of the project is to determine the place and change of sport in Germany's development policy in the past and in the present.
k.bauer@dshs-koeln.de
Park, Jongchul (2022)
Sport for Development Approaches in South Korea: Setting National Preferences and Sharing Ideas in view of SfD Programmes
Researchperiod: 2016 to 2022
Date of the disputation: 12.07.2022
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Susan Kim
Content:
In recent years, sport is considered as a practical vehicle to deal with social, cultural, and economic issues around the world. In particular, diverse sport programmes have been emerged to achieve the initiatives created by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. These initiatives are commonly called Sport for Development (SFD) programme or movement.
SFD programmes are concerned with sport participation, gender, socialisation, and education issues, and are directly related to children, women, disabled, and disadvantaged people. The implement of SFD is generally practiced by global North toward the global South, but several developing nations have recently implemented SFD programmes. This means that implementing SFD actions to promote social change is considered as a global trend around the world.
South Korea has become a sports power in the world with the help of huge investment in elite athlete development system and successful holding mega event such as the 1988 Olympic Games and the 2002 FIFA World Cup. In addition, South Korea is a country of the unique example whose status has changed from an aid-recipient country to a donor country. As a result, Korean government has been trying to have interest in international outreach and cooperation through sports programmes. For instance, Dream Together programme and Dream programme have been implemented as a part of SFD action in South Korea.
Despite increasing interests in SFD programmes, however, Korean sport policy in relation to SFD programmes tends to be political and short-termism for hosting mega event. Also, there has been little research for analysing change process of sport policy on SFD movement in South Korea compared to research, such as school sport, elite sport, and sport for all. In addition, the absence of scientific evidence of how sport activities contribute to dealing with social issues still indicates a significant gap between theory and practice.
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to explore the change process of sport policy in South Korea in relation to Sport for Development (SFD). In addition, the thesis aims to evaluate and analyse Korean SFD programmes on the basis of Sport for Development Theory (SFDT), and then identify distinctive features of Korean SFD compared to international current SFD movement. Lastly, the thesis will pursue to suggest direction of improvement regarding SFD in South Korea.
Klems, Pia (2021)
Values in sports clubs
Research period: 2013 2021
Date of the disputation: 16.02.2021
Second corrector: PD Dr. Sven Güldenpfennig
Publication in progress
Content:
The starting point of the dissertation was an intellectual dissatisfaction with the basic questions about the values of sport. Seemingly unreflected, it is assumed by sports politics and some cultural-historical studies what is to be understood by the values of sports. Both a substantive discussion of what the values of sport are in the context of what falls under sport and the development of the totality at the values of the intrinsic world of sport do not take place to a sufficient extent.
The central objective of the dissertation was thus to clarify the question of what values sport represents or has represented. The sports club, as one of the most important organizational forms of sport and as the representative of organized sport, is the focus of consideration. As an approach to the sports club, the values of the sports club are examined on the basis of commemorative publications. The values of the sports club were determined by a computer-assisted content analysis. The investigation took place in the research framework of the Ruhr area and dealt with the research period starting in the 1960s.
Kornbeck, Jacob (2020)
The European Commission's Diversification of the Sport Policy Field: increasing centralism or a classic case of spillover within a multi-level governance system?
Period of Research: 2010 2020
Date of Graduation: 18.02.2020
Second Corrector: Prof. Dr. Martin Nolte
Content:
As a PhD by published work, this thesis aims to revisit the activities of the European Commission (in particular but not exclusively within the years 2001 and 2011) to find evidence of a diversification of the sport policy field. This allows for a feedback loop towards two fundamental theoretical positions of European integration and relevant research: spillover as used in federalism/neo-functionalism as well as multi-level governance. Empirical evidence is provided through 15 already published papers within three problem areas: EU-sport articulation; anti-doping; Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA). The exercise of critically revisiting these papers was inspired theoretically by the model of the reflective practitioner.
“No normal sport in an abnormal society.“ Wahrnehmungen und Wechselbeziehungen staatlichen und zivilgesellschaftlichen sportbezogenen Protests gegen das Apartheid-Regime in Südafrika zwischen 1956 und 1992“
Period of Research:2013-2018
Date of Graduation: 17.7.2018
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Stefan Berger
Publication in progress
This work belongs to the academic field of transnational history and examines how sport-related protest in South Africa, but also international protest – by the example of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and Great Britain - had an impact on this regime as well as on politics and society of the investigated countries.
This subject has not yet been investigated as it is difficult to find direct indicators for the impacts of protest. It is however undisputed in research that the sport-related protest led to a liberation of apartheid regulations. Its influence on the end of the apartheid regime in total, however, remains unclear and controversial.
On the one hand, the sports boycott is considered the most effective sanction in combating the apartheid regime. On the other hand, sport is said to have only a slight influence on the change of social deficits.
Object of this dissertation will be to weigh the different perspectives against each other in order to develop an own theory with regards to the impact on sport-related protest on the end of apartheid.
Alternative Reiseführer:
Formate, Visualisierungen, Narrationen. Eine mediengeschichtliche Untersuchung von Para- und Basistexten zwischen 1970 und 1985.
Period of research: 2014 2018
Date of graduation: 13.07.2018
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Christopher Kopper
Publication (in German)
Since the origin of the tourism in the 19th century modern tourists have been consuming certain „sights“ on their journey: With the cultural studies by Ueli Gyr and John Urry this symbolic consumption was considered as an essence of modern tourism. Younger cultural-historical studies have examined these gazes in detail. They mostly have analyzed changes in the (visual) symbolic consumption in different phases of tourism development – especially from the middle-class tourism of the 19th century to the mass tourism of the 1960s and 1970s. The findings of these studies have shown that the romantic gaze of the bourgeoisie was replaced by a collective, sociable gaze of the mass tourism. However, these studies have not examined the tourist gaze of alternative tourism in the 1970s and 1980s.
The planned doctoral thesis will analyze the “alternative” gaze using alternative travel guides as “a visual school” (Müller 2012). The research question aims at asking whether an alternative gaze can be identified in alternative travel guides and whether such an alternative gaze can be characterised by the dichotomy between “romantically” and “sociably”. It will be shown in how far the analysis of alternative travel guides can be useful for the (media)-culture history of tourism, but also for the history of the alternative environment or for contemporary historical research about the decades “after the boom”.
Das sportpolitische System Spaniens - Eine theoretisch-empirische Analsyse von Akteuren, Outputs und Entwicklungslinien
Period of research: 2012 2017
Date of graduation: 19.9.2017
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Ilse Hartmann-Tews
Publication
In the European area numerous journals and articles offer an overview about the development of national sport policies, describe the institutional structures of sport, organizational and financial framework conditions. Nevertheless, empiric-analytic nation studies to explain correlations between sport structures, processes and contents are missing as well as an theoretical fundament to analyse sport systems.
Deriving from the central question for the characteristic sport-political structures, processes and contents of the Spanish sport system three subordinated goals are defined: First the investigation of the theoretic-conceptual level by an adaption of the political scientific system theory including the terms of sport polity, sport politics and sport policy for the sport system of Spain as well as the effects of Europeanisation. On the typological level theoretically funded categories or typologies are developed to analyse the Spanish sport system. Focusing on some exemplary regions, the applicability of those typologies is empirically tested. Third the empiric-analytic level is examined by sequencing and summarizing of new and existent data about the Spanish sport system respecting special characteristics of single regions of Spain to relate sport political structures, processes and contents.
Perspectively, the elaborated categories can be used to enable a comparison of distinguished European sport systems what implies a certain degree of generalization to this paper.
Funktionale Institutionen-Bildung in der Anti-Dopingpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Akteureinflüsse, Akteurkonstellationen, Akteurinteraktionen
Period of research: 2012-2017
Date of graduation: 06.09.2017
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Henk-Erik Meier (University Münster)
The dissertation uses the theoretical and methodological instruments of political science to deal with the developments in the fight against doping in Germany, beginning in 1990. While findings from applied economics, sociology and history are taken as a starting point, the main aim of the analysis is to describe and understand the relationship and goals of different actors in the field of anti-doping-policy, using the framework of actor-centered institutionalism. To explain the influence of single actors, the project refers to a multi-dimensional theory of power. In addition, key ideas from political network-analysis, Tsebelis’ thoughts on veto-players and some basic components of the principal-agent-approach are taken into consideration.To gather information about the object of investigation, the study uses content-analysis as well as semi-structured guided interviews with policy-makers and decision-makers from sport organisations. It is the purpose of the study to systematically describe past developments, understand the current situation and develop different scenarios for the future with regard to their likeliness.
Lower League Football in Crisis
Issues of Organisation and Legitimacy in England and Germany
Period of research: 2012 bis 2017
Date of graduation: 14.07.2017
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Klaus Stolz (TU Chemnitz)
While the field of football studies has produced an abundance of literature on professional, top-league football, there is little research output to do with the non-top level football. This book explores the relationship between the top and lower leagues, laying open the drastic schisms that exist between the different levels.
The study links the developments at the top level of English and German football in the past 30 years to transformational processes in lower league football. Illustrating how the hegemonic status of top football weighs hard on the spheres below, it depicts how it also serves as a blueprint for lower league football clubs’ strategies in coping with a threefold dilemma of institutional legitimacy that shows itself in economic, cultural and social dimensions. Taking the different club structures in both national contexts as a starting point, it portrays both the efficacy of institutional frameworks and how these can be challenged from below. This research will be of interest to students and scholars across football studies, sports studies, the sociology of sport, and organisation studies.
„Interessenvertretung im Sport zwischen Kooperation und Konflikt – Das Verhältnis von Staat und Sport in Deutschland und Frankreich”
Period of research: 2009 until 2017
Date of graduation: 11.5.2017
Second corrector: Hon.-Prof. Dr. Georg Anders
Publication
The fundamental question of research concerns the similarities and differences between the German and the French sport system referring to the cooperation and the reciprocal understanding of governmental and non-governmental institutions of sport administration and aims on defining their characteristics. The empirical proceeding is based on an analysis of the legal foundations of each system. This includes statutes, regulations, statutes of clubs and federations, target agreements and other bilateral settlements as well as the structures and construction of each sport system and interrogations of experts and representatives of governmental and non-governmental institutions of Germany and France. The paper aims to extend and refine the existent structural and political comparisons in sport sciences. Against the backdrop of political science approaches of pluralism and neo-corporatism, the results of the empirical research will be discussed with a special focus on the features of sport as a sector of the society.
„… und für die Ehre unserer Nation(en)“: Olympische Deutschlandpolitik’ zwischen 1960 und 1968
Period of research: 2012 until 2016
Date of graduation: 19.1.2017
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Manfred Lämmer (DSHS)
The thesis deals with the sports policy of both German states during the years 1960 to 1968. It is looked at as part of the intra-German policy. For this reason the thesis focusses on Olympic subjects.To describe adequately what was going on in this years, Kleßmanns concept of asymmetric intertwined parallel history is extended with elements of the theory of dynamic transaction that was developed by Früh to describe the effects of media.The concept of dynamic intertwined history of communication, which emerged this way, gives us the opportunity to look at the eight perhaps most eventful years of German sports history and to see it as a result of intersecting actions and reactions.The first goal on this process was to gain influence on the I.O.C. Both German states were successful in this respect. The FRG became the Olympic host in 1972, and in Munich the GDR received the right to use their own national symbols during the summer games for the first time.This graduate thesis describes the way that led to this solution, which satisfied both sides, but made neither of them really happy.
Opportunities and Limitations of Youth Sport Programs in Cape Town: Analysis of Determinants in the Context of Development and their impact on Research
Period of research: 2012 until 2016
Date of graduation: 19.12.2016
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Bart Vanreusel (KU Leuven)
The research project was embedded in the broader field of sport-for-development and was located in Cape Town, South Africa in two different projects. Both projects aim at life-skill development but are different in structure and program. The research takes place while the intervention is still ongoing, with the data being collected from February till July 2013 and February till July 2014. The projects are not only being analyzed in terms of their effectiveness and processes with regard to life-skill development, but also concerning the methods used for evaluating the interventions. What are the effects of sport-based life-skill programs on youths? How do these effects come about? Which processes underlie them? What conditions are necessary for sport-based life-skill programs to have beneficial outcomes? In order to answer these questions two qualitative methods, the ‘Most Significant Change’ method and participant observation, are applied, as well as quantitative approaches. All of them are used complementary to assure triangulation increasing reliability and validity of measures, and also getting insights into the same sociological phenomenon from different perspectives. Is there a difference in the appropriateness of the methods used to identify processes? Is there a difference in the appropriateness of the methods concerning the different projects and programs? The methods themselves are also analyzed concerning their useful application in different programs and fields. So far, the MSC-method and participant observation have successfully been applied in areas outside sport and imply a potential for innovations in the area of monitoring and evaluating sport-in-development projects.
Integration in Sports Clubs: Development of a social science-based Quality Management Model
Period of research: 2013 until 2016
Date of graduation: 12. April 2016
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Christoph Breuer (DSHS)
timo.schaedler@specialolympics.de
This thesis intends the development of a social science-based QM-Model for integration processes in Sports Clubs. Applications are explained in a functional context. The work study aims to contribute to a topical and problem-related interdisciplinary discourse of political science, sociology, education and business administration in the overall context of sports science. The objective is to develop a systematic theory-based QM-Model, that helps to visualize and realize integration processes in a sports club and beyond it to areas of society. The heterogeneity of the sporting sector with its different orientation and directions of integration policies encourage the development of a model that can meet these requirements at an appropriate level of abstraction. The development of the QM-Model for integration is carried out in close context of theoretical foundation and practical relevance.
Struktur- und Funktionsanalyse von Corporate Social Responsibility-induzierten Public-Private-Partnership-Modellen im Bildungsbereich anhand der Schulsportförderung 'Fit am Ball'
Period of research: 2008 bis 2015
Date of graduation: 7.7.2015
Second corrector: Prof. Dr. Daniel Memmert (DSHS)
Asia and the Future of Football: The Role of the Asian Football Confederation
Forschungszeitraum: 2010 bis 2013
Tag der Disputation: 7.02.2014
Zweitkorrektor: Prof. Dr. Fan Hong (University of Glasgow)
Further Publications:
- Weinberg, Ben: Asia and the Future of Football: The Role of the Asian Football Confederation, Oxford 2015.
- Weinberg, Ben: "The Future is Asia"? The Role of the Asian Football Confederation in the Governance and Development of Football in Asia, in: The International Journal of the History of Sport 2012, S. 535-552.