The IOC Olympic Studies Centre has selected eight projects for the 2022 PhD Students and Early Career Academics Research Grant Programme

“The quality of applications for the highly competitive 2022 IOC Olympic Studies Centre PhD Students and Early Career Academics Research Grant Programme was truly impressive”, said Professor Tracy Taylor of Victoria University, Australia, who is a member of the Grant Selection Committee. “The proposals came from researchers across the world and canvassed a wide range of topics. The successful grant awardees presented novel ways of approaching issues important to the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games, robust methods and achievable timelines – and offer the potential to make significant contributions to scholarship and practice”.

This Grant Programme was created in 1999 to encourage research with a humanities or social sciences perspective on any aspect dealing with the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The Programme encourages consultation of the IOC’s patrimony by facilitating access to the historical archives, library collections and image repositories.

Applications were open to postgraduate students enrolled in a PhD programme and to academic staff members and postdoctoral fellows who had completed their doctorate or equivalent degree in or after 2018.

“We are excited to announce the grant holders of this 2022 edition and look forward to working with them throughout the year and supporting their research,” said Nuria Puig, Manager of the External Relations and Academic Programmes Section of the OSC. “Many of these young scholars will become university professors, they will share Olympic knowledge and will promote the interest in Olympic studies among their future students. This is also an important objective of the grant programme".

For the eight projects that have been selected, each candidate will receive a grant enabling them to carry out their research project to the best possible standard, and if relevant, to consult The Olympic Studies Centre’s resources in Lausanne (Switzerland).

The eight research projects are:

• Multi-screen and Second Screen Viewing of Chinese Audience during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games

• Parkour facing the Olympics. An historical and philosophical analysis of the ideas involved in the controversy and a proposal of possible confluences.

• Relations between the French National Olympic Committee and the IOC, from 1952 to 1972

• Rio 2016 Olympic Flame Keepers: social-cultural legacy and memory as heritage of the first South American Olympics

• The effects of the Olympic Agenda 2020 on Urban Planning for Mega-Events: assessing case studies of future Olympic Games and outlining new recommendations.

• The Growth of Women’s Olympic Weightlifting in the United States

• Understanding Public Attention towards Sustainability Promotion Activities: Big Data Analytics of Tokyo 2020

• Uniforms, protest, and women's bodies: An exploration into the role of uniforms in the production of gender in the Olympic Games

“I was very pleased when I received the approval news, specially knowing the IOC standards and the high-profile of the Selection Committee”, said Prof. Dr. Luis Henrique Rolim, from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil, one of the grant recipients. “To be able to research at The Olympic Studies Centre archive is going to be a turning point for our study regarding the Rio 2016 legacy”.

The full list of research projects funded by The Olympic Studies Centre since the creation of its grant programmes in 1999 is available here. For more information on The Olympic Studies Centre, its resources, services and programmes, visit here or contact studies.centre@olympic.org.