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In the last decade, sport has earned unprecedented recognition in international policy circles as a tool to support international development. Nonetheless, many have challenged this `new social movement' (Kidd, 2008), concerned by its uncritical application of Global North models of sport to Global South contexts. Addressing these concerns, Brunel researchers and collaborators have drawn on the field of international development studies to investigate how principles of local ownership and partnership can be applied to sport. Since 2010, empirical studies and critical conceptual analyses have contributed to this. Specifically through building organisational capacity at local level, supporting partnership between funders and recipient organisations, and developing national as well as international policy guidance to ensure community level experiences and perspectives are represented in sport for development policy and strategies.
The impact of our research is on promoting racial equality through sport and leisure spanning almost twenty years from our early work with the Rugby Football League (RFL). The nature of the impact has been three-fold: the incorporation of key findings into professional equality standards, guidelines and continuing professional development (CPD); enhanced public understandings of race and the multiple forms of racism; and the stimulation of debate to shape policy and improve opportunities for sport and leisure. Impact has reached a wide range of beneficiaries, including sports governing bodies; sports councils; professional sport; equality/ diversity organisations and teacher education.
The Birkbeck Sport Business Centre has been involved in research examining governance within the sport industry since 1999. Findings from research into the football industry have contributed to policy debate through parliamentary enquiries while research on the broader sports sector has been used by the Sport and Recreation Alliance to improve governance practices across national governing bodies of sport (NGBs). In particular, the research informed the development of the Voluntary Code of Good Governance for the Sport and Recreation Sector, a best practice guide that has been adopted by more than 60 National Governing Bodies of Sport in the UK.
Using a ground-breaking database of recovered narratives of Latin American women during the Wars of Independence,
The use of performance enhancing methods and substances, or `doping', has been the major ethical issue relating to elite sports for several decades. Prof McNamee has led internationally recognised research that has contributed significantly to national and international approaches to catch or deter athletes from doping. This has taken the form of research underpinning the development of UK wide approaches to anti-doping education for sportsmen and women, educational materials for sports physicians around the world, and significant influences on policy critique and development at the global level for both the International Cycling Union and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).
Research by Professor Sarah Childs has had wide-ranging influence in relation to improving women's parliamentary representation in the UK. This impact has taken the following forms. First, through her role as Specialist Adviser to the Speaker's Conference (2008-10), Childs helped set the agenda around the multiple issues and political practices (including legislative ones) that determine women's political representation. Second, she followed up on the Conference by presenting proposals on MPs' pay, assisting in the development of the Counting Women In campaign, and drawing attention to the implications of parenting for parliamentary representation. Third, Childs' research has been significant in promoting the adoption of strong equality promotion measures in the Conservative Party. This includes helping to secure acceptance in principle in 2009 by the then Leader of the Opposition David Cameron of All Women Shortlists. Her interventions have also accentuated the issue of women's representation in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, resulting in support for some of the measures Childs has advocated at the highest levels of those organizations. Thus, due in part to her research and argumentation, it is now more accepted amongst party elites and grassroots members alike, in all three principal UK political parties, that women's representation continues to be inadequate and requires urgent redress. More broadly, Childs has made political, public and civil society actors, as well as the wider public, more cognizant of the democratic deficit incurred when women, and women's interests and perspectives, are absent, under-represented or marginalized in parliamentary politics.
The findings of empirical research conducted by Professor Jim Barry and Dr Trudie Honour of UEL were shared at two focused capacity building sessions held in 2008 and 2009 for women leaders in middle and senior positions of responsibility and decision-making in the public and third sectors of a number of developing countries. Workshops were attended by women from Albania, Bahrain, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Participants considered the relevance and application of the research findings for their own countries, and worked together and with the researchers to formulate potential capacity development implementation strategies for women in positions of responsibility in those countries.
Allwood's research into Women and Politics has looked at women's participation in mainstream and alternative forms of political activity; gender and policy, focusing on prostitution, violence and abortion policy; and the political participation of refugee women. The research has informed government advisory panels, think-tanks, and NGOs, in particular in debates around gender quotas and the relationship between gender and democracy. External voices and actors have helped shape the research process, and the audience of this research has made material and distinct decisions based on new insights effectively shared, as demonstrated by citations of research outputs in policy documents and discussion papers.
Research into seventeenth-century Quaker writings conducted at Loughborough University by Prof. Elaine Hobby and Dr Catie Gill has enriched the cultural and spiritual lives of modern-day Quakers, and that of others interested in the Quaker movement. This has been achieved both through their involvement in an advisory capacity at Woodbrooke, Europe's only Quaker Study Centre, since the mid-1990s, and through their working together to produce a booklet and audio materials that are being distributed by the Quaker group Kindlers. The booklet and its related recording grew from a workshop that Hobby led for Kindlers in London in November 2011.
Research undertaken by Dr Rainbow Murray in the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIR) at QMUL has assisted governments and activists from Europe, Israel and China interested in adopting gender quotas in elections to understand their potential advantages, pitfalls and consequences. Users of her research include parliaments, intergovernmental organisations, political parties, public bodies, NGOs and the media.