Plenary Speakers
The International Conference on Sport and Society will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations, by researchers and practitioners.
| Varsha Majmudar | |
| Dominic Malcolm |
Garden Conversations
Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.
The Speakers
- Varsha Majmudar
Varsha Majmudar has been a National Champion ten times in all in four internationally recognized sports – Table Tennis, Snooker, 9-Ball Pool, and 8-Ball Pool. She was the Indian Ladies National Champion in Table Tennis in 1987, and the Indian Ladies National Snooker Champion in 2002.
She won the Singapore Ladies National Snooker Championships from 1999-2002. She won the Singapore Ladies national 9-Ball Pool Championships from 2000-2002 in addition to the 8-Ball Pool Championships in 2002.
Varsha has represented India in Table-Tennis in various Junior and Senior level international competitions, some of the main ones being the Asian and World Championships. She was awarded the Chatrapati Shivaji award for Sports Excellence by the Maharashtra State Government.
She has represented Singapore in various international events in Snooker and Pool, most notably at The Ladies Embassy World Snooker Championships.
In addition to having played the above games, Varsha is also passionate about watching and reading about most other sports, mainly cricket and tennis.
She has also done sports commentary on ESPN-Star Sports and for different media networks in Table-Tennis, Snooker, Pool, Badminton and Tennis from 1996-2007.
- Dominic Malcolm
Dominic Malcolm is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Loughborough University, UK. Formerly co-editor of the journal Soccer and Society, he is the current Convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Sport Study Group. He is editor of Sport: Critical Concepts in Sociology (Routledge, 2003) and author of The Sage Dictionary of Sport Studies (Sage, 2008) and Sport and Sociology (Routledge, forthcoming).
His primary research interests are healthcare in elite sport, and cricket and social relations. With respect to the former he has published articles about the management of pain and injury in rugby union, the social construction of injury diagnoses and inter-professional relations among and between healthcare workers. He is currently editing The social organization of sports medicine (Routledge) with Parissa Safai.
His cricket research spans the historical origins of the game and its diffusion to the Caribbean and America, changes to fan engagement with the game and in particular changing notions of English national identity, race relations and the British game, and postcolonial relations. He is currently writing Cricket: Codification, Colonisation and Contemporary Identities (Bloomsbury).
