One hundred thirty years ago, the first basketball game played outside North America was held in Paris, France, the first step in a global movement recently celebrated with World Basketball Day—one that Philadelphia now has a unique tie into thanks to its very own Batman, the 76ers’ French swingman Nicolas Batum.
Even though baseball is the dominant sport in Taiwan and its neighbors, basketball offers up interesting lessons in how sports diplomacy can be used to promote greater gender equality.
That’s a bit of a provocative question, but one that lent itself well to a workshop I co-directed with Dr. J Simon Rofe last week at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London.
Hello there, and welcome! I’m glad you stopped by.
This space is designed as a general catch-all for my ideas and what inspires me across the international sports-, history-, and communications worlds.
Why focus on these three “hats”? Many people silo these off into individual industries. But in fact, from my professional experiences as well as what I’ve learned in the field, today’s sports, communications, and history worlds are in fact intricately intertwined.
As you’re getting ready for today’s Super Bowl spectacle, it’s a good time to recall that #EverythingHasAHistory. Including American football which, as Ben Halls at VICE Sports reminds us, is a much closer cousin to rugby than many Americans likely realize. In fact, the changes that occurred as American football developed in the late nineteenth century leads to one of the earliest, surprising, and fascinating stories of transatlantic influences in French sport.
