events | David McGillivray

FESTSPACE: Festivals, event and inclusive public space in Europe

In early June, along with my co-investigators Dr Andrew Smith, Dr Bernadette Quinn, Dr Alba Colombo and Dr Kristina Lindstrom, I helped launch our HERA-funded FESTSPACE project the University of the West of Scotland’s Paisley Campus. This project focuses on the role of festivals and events in producing inclusive public space and involves a much…

EventRights: Major Sport Events and Human Rights

After what felt like a very long wait (4 or 5 months) I was delighted to receive an email in July confirming that a research and knowledge exchange project I’ve helped design had been funded by the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 MSCA RISE stream. In the intensely competitive HEI environment we occupy it’s…

Event Bidding: Politics, Persuasion and Resistance

It’s always rewarding to complete a project that you’ve been working on for some time, especially in the increasingly demanding world of academia. Today, my new book, Event Bidding: Politics, Persuasion and Resistance, written with my colleague Dr Daniel Turner, is now in print. This text takes a critical approach to the event bidding process, linking…

Major sporting events and geographies of disability

Along with my co-authors Dr Laura Misener and Prof Gayle McPherson, I’ve just published a paper that focuses on the role of major sporting events in addressing inequalities relating to the geographies of disability. The article is accessible permanently here, with free copies available for the first 50 people. This paper draws on a collaborative (and…

Mobile Methods for Researching Bodies in Motion

I was delighted recently to be invited to present at the inaugural seminar of a really innovative seminar series designed and led by Dr Andrea Bundon from the University of British Columbia’s School of Kinesiology. The series, Mobile Methods for Researching Bodies in Motion was designed by those: interested in exploring the use of digital and…

Mega events, soft power and ‘hijacking’ the platform

Recently, along with my colleague Professor Gayle McPherson I was invited to talk at a conference on cultural diplomacy and human rights at the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. Here is a copy of the presentation. The presentation was followed with some really interesting questions from the audience. These included: how can we judge…

Platform politics: sport events and the affordances of digital and social media

Over the least few years I’ve been exploring the growing role of digital and social media in the mediatisation of major sporting events. I’ve published a number of articles related to this thread of work, including The Olympic Torch Relay: Activating citizen-consumer discourses (2013) Digital cultures, acceleration and mega sporting event narratives (2013), and Young people, digital media…