Latest News

BSSH Fellow, Professor Richard Holt, has just released a revised version of his seminal book Sport and the British with a book launch at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) in London on the 29th September 2025.

We are delighted to announce that the 2025 Lord Aberdare Prize is awarded to Matthew Llewellyn and Toby Rider for British Sporting Relations with Apartheid South Africa. 

The 2025 Richard Cox Postgraduate Prize has been awarded to Stuart Gibbs of Manchester Metropolitan University for his conference presentation 'Lady Florence Dixie and the Football Girls'.

Congratulations to Hayley Kilgallon and Atlanta Tsiaoukkas, joint winners of this year's Sporting Inequalities Prize.

The Sport in History best article award for 2025 was awarded to Dr Ross Walker of Stirling University for his article "James Naismith: The creator of basketball and the Scottish Connection".

With the end of the Chair's cycle, three new lifetime fellows have been awarded to Fiona Skillen, Carol Osborne and Dave Day for their exceptional service to the field of sports history. 

The society is delighted to announce that the cricket historian, author and curator Neil Robinson has received the 2025 Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship.

At the end of last month, a BSSH-funded conference 'Sport, "islands", people and politics' was held in Kirkwall, Orkney, to tie in with the Island Games, which will open on 12 July 2025. Conference organiser Matt McDowell reports back on the one day event.

Arran Hicks, a doctoral student at the University of East Anglia researching football during the Cold War, received a BSSH postgraduate research grant to help with costs of an archives visit to Switzerland and has sent us the following report.

A new exhibition featuring the Great War Munitionettes side Sterling Ladies has just opened at the Valence House Museum in Dagenham, London.

This December sees not one but two publications from BSSH members, Matthew Taylor and Andy Carter.

The School of Sport and Exercise Science at Ulster University is now offering a new PhD study opportunity. 

The first women's association football side was inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame at the prestigious SWF annual awards ceremony. 

The University of Ulster's Belfast Campus has been announced as the venue for the 2025 BSSH Annual Conference and will take place between 20th and 22nd August 2025.   

There was a sell-out crowd at the Scottish Football Hall of Fame on 30 October 2024 for the launch event of 'A Most Unsuitable Game' a collection of prose and poetry celebrating the history of Scottish women's football.

Call for papers "Cricket in 2035: What Could it Look Like?" Cricket Research Network Annual Conference.

Congratulations to Lisa Jenkel and Margaret Roberts joint winners of the 2024 Sport in History Sporting Inequalities Prize.

This was a wonderful year for sport history and the Lord Aberdare Prize committee would like to congratulate each author for the quality and depth of their prose. But there can only be one winner...

An exhibition celebrating 120 years of Carlisle Utd FC has just opened at the city's Tullie House Museum.

The Cricket Research Network has released a call for papers at its 2024 conference, to be held in Cardiff.