Dissertations

Working Title:
Fighting Youth Unemployment through Sports for Development – Palestine (West Bank & East Jerusalem)

Start of Research: 2016

Content:
Palestine is a country that is under lots of political and economic pressure associated with conflict and oppression from both the Israeli occupation and internal struggles between Fatah and Hamas political parties, thus the Palestinian society and especially youth have become increasingly split and suffering from many divisions and obstacles. One result is a very high unemployment rate amongst youth (39%). The dissertation will explore and analyse the role of sports for development (S4D) and the different interventions of S4D in increasing youth competencies and employability skills by focusing on the theoretical aspect of the education and employment system in Palestine, as well as comprehensive data from the field; youth, decision makers, policies, and statistics. It will also give an insight on the history of Palestine, the political implications, the economic and socio-cultural contexts, living conditions and youth immigration, the vocational education mindset and approach, and youth policies.  

tawartani@­gmail.com 

Working Title “Interactions between institutional characteristics and the democratisation of sport governance in Europe”

Content

“Democracy” constitutes a key dimension of many Good Governance (GG) inventories and is strongly associated with various stakeholders’ ambitions to foster and safeguard the integrity of sports. At practical level, academic opinion is that democratic shortcomings (such as the absence of fair and open elections, stakeholder participation in decision-making, or a clear separation of powers) exist across various sport governance systems, be it within leading sport governing bodies, anti-doping organisations, or professional team sports leagues and their clubs. Related shortcomings, however, clearly contradict with the increasing pressure for sport organisations to comply with Good Governance standards in order to uphold the widely propagated principle of the “conditional autonomy” of sports, as well as provisions on democracy in sport-specific policy documents such as in the Council Resolution on the key characteristics of the European Model of Sport. Against this backdrop, there is much reason to assume that the way multiple dimensions of elite sport in Europe are currently governed is at odds with fundamental democratic values enshrined in EU and/or national legislation.

Moreover, at theoretical level, an absence of holistic research on the normative basis of formulated democratic principles in sport-specific GG research prevails. To date, it remains vague where certain norms, rights and moral values which are supposed to define democracy in sports governance are rooted, and whether they, for example, take a universalist or more contextualist character. There is, furthermore, limited knowledge on possible influencing factors (determinants), (causal) relationships, and effects with reference to the implementation of democratic processes in sport governance systems. This, in turn, is an important desideratum in view of the increasing complexity of the multi-level governance of elite sports in Europe, both at vertical level (e.g. across the national and trans/supranational regulation of sports) and horizontal level (e.g. across single countries and types of sports). Summed up, it can be argued that there is a strong demand for a higher degree of analytical differentiationin research on democracy in the areas of sport governance and comparative sport politics as a whole.

Expanding upon four EU-funded research projects conducted by the IESF which provide an overarching methodological and analytical framework, the main objectives of the dissertation are to conceptualise, map, and explain (non-)democratic governance in three distinct, yet interrelated sport governance systems at EU-level, and to shape further the sport-specific Good Governance discourse. With specific analytical focus on issues of athletes’ participation and welfare which are gaining momentum in sports governance globally and are being controversially discussed at the academic and practical level, the two overarching research questions of the dissertation which shall guide the further research process are:

1. “What is democracy in the governance of (a) anti-doping, (b) Olympic elite sport, and (c) professional team sport in EU member states?”
2. “What institutional characteristics (at systemic, political, and organisational levels) influence (enable/constrain) the implementation of democratic principles in the governance of (a) anti-doping, (b) Olympic elite sport, and (c) professional team sport in EU member states?”

Working title: Sport and environmental protection,

Start of Research: 2/2024  

Working title: Sports diplomacy from a women’s perspective

Start of research: 10/2023

Work title
Chances and Limitations of Sports Diplomacy in the Western Balkans

Start of Research
2022

Abstract
Since the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, the EU has considered the potential of sport to assist with the amplification of foreign policy messages. European sports policies of the past decade are characterised by numerous activities and by on-going differentiation.

Sport as a diplomatic tool is increasingly gaining relevance amplifying foreign policy and diplomatic messages. It can be used to enhance its international brand with a view to leveraging new political and economic opportunities.

Putting a focus on the Western Balkan area, the renewed approach to Western Balkan enlargement, the EU seeks to capitalize from its current economic and political recovery and draw the region closer. It becomes clear that sport’s role in post-socialist states’ foreign policy is a topic that has been given less attention within the academic field of sports and international relations.

The envisaged dissertation aims to fill a gap in the academic literature and should bring new research perspectives. Effective efforts will be made to shine a light on the situation in the Western Balkan area, especially some targeted countries (such as Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, etc.).

Working title
Who Are the Fans of German Women’s Soccer? A Theoretical Analysis of Social Foundations, Media, and Collective Identity

Wer sind die Fans des deutschen Frauenfußballs? Eine theoretische Analyse von sozialen Grundlagen, Medien und kollektiver Identität

Start of Research: October 2025

Content
In recent years, women’s soccer has garnered increasing social and media attention both nationally and internationally. A particularly defining moment was the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO, which not only generated enthusiasm in Germany but was also seen as a “boost” for public interest in women’s soccer. This development is not only evident on the international stage: growing interest is also apparent in the amateur and semi-professional sectors. Meanwhile, there has been little advancement in research on this topic. Women’s soccer is rarely the focus of attention, and within this narrow field, fan research plays no role.

The aim of this proposed dissertation is to close this gap by documenting and analyzing the sociocultural structures and dynamics of the fan scene in German women’s soccer and to gain a deeper understanding of the motivations and needs of this fan group.

Youth Sport Policy in Europe
Cross-National Comparison and the Perspectives of Europeanization  

Start of research: 2015

Content:
The health and physical activity of children and teenager currently counts as polarizing topic. Nowadays, the topic children and youth sport - as the foundation of long-lasting physical activity – fills political agendas in Europe. Thereby the missing structures or the lacking cooperation between various stakeholder are criticized. Until now, the scientific research shows a reluctance to this research field. A cross-national comparison, concentrated on the structures and system of youth sport, does not yet exist.

The aim of the planned Doctoral Thesis lies within a systematic analysis of the multi-dimensional and complex policy field youth sport and a comparison at multinational level. Concretely the differences of the selected countries are examined and analyzed, in view of the to be investigated criteria in the youth sport area. Besides the multinational analysis and the consideration on supranational level, the policy field youth sport will be set in a European context and will be discussed with regard to the Europeanization approach. 

Methodologically a literature and documentary inquiry will be conducted as groundwork. Building on this, expert interviews will be undertaken which will be evaluated with qualitative content analysis. Through theory and methodology, an applicable categorization should be developed to be able to investigate European youth sport system with a holistic design.

Consequently, the expected results should display not only an empirical but also theoretical relevance. Furthermore, the research should induce to further research, as well as should provide profitable implications for the investigated countries.

Working Title

Understanding the Sport Policy Process in China: The Dialectical Relationships between Actors, Contexts and Policy Networks

Start of Research: 2020

Content

The Reform since the 1970s created unprecedented potential for understanding bureaucratic relations and policy processes in China, likewise, in the sport domain. Burgeoning attention has been paid to the sport policy process recently, regarding its relationship with politics, the role of authority, the interaction during the process, how sport policy is made, or even, is there a way to open the ‘black box’ of sport policy-making in China. Policy Networks, as a highly illuminating theoretical gateway in understanding the sport policy process in China, has been tested in the completed master thesis of Danlin Wu. Elaborating on the empirical study, the policy network for sport in China do form a more integrated policy community, that comprised inner areas of the Party co-existing state bureaucrats and outer circles of sporadic and issue-related QUANGOs and other actors. 

As an extension of the Master thesis, this Ph.D. dissertation would like to further generate the dialectical relationships between those key elements (i.e., actors, networks, contextual factors, etc.) in the policy process. Meso-level Framework of Policy Network is placed at the center of analysis, and macro-level variables regarding Fragmented Authoritarianism and the Chinese Model of Consensus Decision-Making are added to improve the explanatory utility to the sport policy process in China. The planed dissertation adopts a qualitative research approach. Interviews with pertinent experts, scholars, and officialdoms in the field, as well as content analysis of both policy documents, government reports, official publications, correspondence between the network actors, personal archives, meeting records, interview records and so forth serve this end. Consequently, the dialectical nexus in both abstract and concrete forms in sport policy process in China can be explored.

Working Title
Insights into China's Leisure Sports: from the Perspective of Sustainability

Start of Research
2022

Content
With the implementation of legal holidays and the rapid development of economy, leisure sport has gradually become an important agenda of China's leisure development and also sports development. In the foreseeable future and as an important national development strategy, leisure sport will become an important part of public policy, especially in the field of sports policy. This study attempts to conduct a basic research on the development of leisure sports in China. Firstly, the study will outline the historical context of the development of Leisure sports in China with the transformation of leisure sports policy as the core. More importantly, from the perspective of sustainability, this study will comprehensively apply analytical frameworks and theories from the fields of policy science, sociology and sports science, to explore the sustainability of the leisure sports policy itself (including interaction between policy and economic, political, social development), the sustainability of individual development under the policy (physical literacy), the sustainability of ecological environment under the effect of policy (sports-themed town). The study will eventually form a comprehensive evaluation study on the sustainability of leisure sports development in China, and give evidence-based suggestions for future development by exploring the past, present and future of China's leisure sports policy.