POLIS stands for Politics and Policy in Sport. POLIS aims to foster closer collaboration amongst academics working in the emerging field of sport policy or dealing with political issues relating to sport. The idea of establishing a network dedicated to political science approaches in sport arose from a spontaneous initiative by Jeroen Scheerder (University of Leuven) and Jürgen Mittag (German Sport University Cologne) during bilateral guest lectures at their respective universities. Given the increasing number of studies in this field, there is clearly a growing need for systematic reflection and greater collaboration between researchers in Europe.
Support for this idea became evident a few months later at several conferences, such as the 2017 EASS Conference in Prague and the 2017 Sport&EU Conference in Molde. Since then, the POLIS network has been loosely affiliated with both organisations, the EASS (European Association for the Sociology of Sport) and Sport&EU (Association for the Study of Sport and the European Union).
Since the network was founded, several conferences and workshops have taken place.