I was delighted to be a part of this BBC radio programme, especially since my dear friend Dr Mahfoud Amara is also interviews.
Why is watching sport so important to us as a species? And what happens when that experience is taken away from us? Award-winning sports journalist and broadcaster Clare Balding explores why sport plays such a crucial role in shaping society, speaking to a field of global experts and elite sportspeople, including Martina Navratilova.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly put a stop to virtually all sporting activity across the globe – and left vast numbers of people staring into an existential void. In sport’s absence, we’ve been hungrily reliving past contests, debating hypothetical scenarios, and doing everything we can to plug the hole in our lives. The crisis has shown how our relationship with sport dominates our lives and our media, our conversations and our leisure time. In this documentary, Clare Balding talks to figures from the worlds of anthropology, philosophy and human behaviour to try to figure out why experiencing sport is so meaningful to us, whether we’re in a crowd, or one of millions following on television and social media.
Her interviewees include the sociologists Akilah Carter-Francique, Mahfoud Amara and Ramachandra Guha; anthropologist Leila Zaki Chakravarty; and philosophers Heather Reid and Andy Martin – who unpick the myriad ways in which our love of sport is deeply embedded in human experience and history, and how our consumption of it has shaped modern society.
Cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott reveals what we know about what happens in our brains as we watch sport, whilst bioethicist and technology expert Andy Miah tells Clare how cutting-edge digital advances and the new world of eSports are changing the relationship between fan and sporting event forever.
An Overcoat Media Production for BBC World Service. Produced by Steven Rajam Photo: Liverpool fans at Anfield, Credit: Tembele Bohle, Pexels
It was an absolute pleasure to be involved with an event this week run by the Tokyo 2020 Director of International Communications Tatsuo Ogura, who took time out of his role to produce an independent, charity liveathon about all things digital and sport. For 24hours speakers from all over the world covered a range of topics in an event he wants to become the SXSW of Japan.
My session takes you through the last 20 years of digital innovation, which leads up to how esports are changing the conversation about creativity, culture, and content. You can watch it back here
This week, I took part in an event led by the United Nations agency ITU and the Global Esports Federation, examining points of intersection between artificial intelligence and esports. Other panelists included Ursula Romero, Chris Overholt, Chong Geng Ng, Bryn Balcombe, and our host was the amazing LJ Rich. We covered a wide range of subjects from how esports integration with AI is driving ground breaking research and the possibility that AI may just save the world from a range of catastrophic risks.
Currently working on a full article to examine these areas, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, here’s the recording from yesterday.
At the end of June, I took part in the Digital Wellbeing Festival, speaking about the importance of mental wellness when working within esports.
I was joined by Chester King, CEO of the British Esports Association and what struck me most was how the playing of games is such a joyful part of life and that we must ensure that this aspect of esports is present for all players, is a crucial part of what we need to produce.
One of the challenges with this is the risk that things which become work-like tend often to become ways of detracting from enjoyment and so the goal must me to find pleasure in the work we do, so that there is a strong sense of value and enrichment that we derive from it.
Yet, we must also be wary of the desire for the labour industries to cultivate such desires, in order that we may better serve the processes of production. This is a difficult balance to strike and yet I think it is well mediated by also nurturing awareness of systemic means of our exploitation, so we may better exhibit and assert our agency within these systems.
Another really fun event this week was led by Tonic Digital and I covered the last three months and what’s happened to the sports world in coming to terms with lockdown. So many traditional sports have found a digital alternative that it’s made some major steps into imagining a new future for them. Whether this will lead to long term planning for alternative experiences, or whether the end of lockdown will see things snap back into business as usual is anybody’s guess, but there is a new conversation taking place between sports and esports right now that’s really exciting.
I was really pleased to take part in an event produced by The Landing in Manchester this week. Focused on the gaming industries, I had a conversation with the amazing Julia Cwierz on where esports is going and what we need to think about to take it somewhere that is safe, exciting, and innovative.
The Landing is a remarkable community based in Media City and I’m really pleased that the University of Salford works with them on so many areas.
We talked about some really crucial issues in the world of esports, but the key one for me is the relationship between the wider culture of gaming and how it relates to competition. If we don’t conceptualise that well, we can easily lose sight of what’s at stake and what’s important when thinking about the direction of travel for esports.
This month, I spoke at the Cheltenham Science Festival , which ran a fantastic online programme, despite the COVID-19 Lockdown. Take a look at the 60+ hours of content on their channel. Here’s my talk:
I’m really excited to share the publication of my Wellcome Trust report, which builds on research investigating the experiences of young people through digital health. There’s so much in it and I’d really recommend a deep dive into the report, which you can find on our dedicated website.
We’ve spent the last decade being anxious about the increasing amount of time young people spend in front of screens. However, in the last two months, children have been encouraged to dive into digital like never before. This has thrown up all kinds of questions about how to keep well online in a time where being outside and together in physical space has been impossible.
Parents have sought to employ digital platforms any way they can to ensure their children remain intimately connected to their friends, fearful of the time they are missing socialising, playing, learning and sharing.
Where previously we may have been sceptical of digital learning compared to face-to-face experiences, it has become central to children’s homeschooling and a great deal of positives have come out of it. In addition to work set by schools, children in the UK and across the world have engaged with new teachers. Many have been exercising with Joe Wicks or doing maths with Carol Vorderman.
These digital learning experiences have been the best option for children under lockdown, yet this is hard to reconcile with our previous worries about limiting screen time. Seemingly overnight, even organisations that had warned us about being in digital space too much now advocate their use.
The World Health Organization, for example, has been working with gaming companies as a way of promoting key COVID-19 health messages. This comes less than two years after it identified excessive gaming as a possible health disorder. While this partnership is far from a general policy on promoting gaming for health, it has sent the message that gaming is an important way to maintain mental health during a long period of social isolation.
With social distancing and homeschooling likely to be a feature of children’s lives for some time yet, we need new ways to think about the time young people spend in digital space. Some helpful guidance can be found in a 2019 report published by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Public Health, which outlined guidance for children’s screen use.
The report did not specify putting time limits on screen time, nor did it say that certain kinds of screen exposure are worse or better than others. Instead, it invited families to talk about their collective screen health together and discuss when it seemed to be making family time worse. The report invited families to ask themselves four questions:
Is screen time in your household controlled?
Does screen use interfere with what your family wants to do?
Does screen use interfere with sleep?
Are you able to control snacking during screen time?
Answering these questions in 2020 feels like a very different exercise, but they’re still a really great place to start when helping children – and adults – through this difficult period.
The impact of extra screen time
One of the big challenges for researchers right now is understanding the impact of the extra screen time young people are experiencing during lockdown. We have no precedents for such conditions and most of the research on screen time is still in the context of a life where a big part of a child’s day is within a school setting.
It’s likely that screen time will continue to be a big part of children’s lives.bbernard/Shutterstock
For this reason, we need more data to understand how the extra screen time is affecting young people, but it’s reasonable to conclude that it all depends how that screen time is orchestrated. For example, being in front of a Joe Wicks workout and doing exercise is likely a very different category of experience than being on social media.
This is why active gaming and even virtual reality experiences could usher in an entirely new way of thinking about the screen and its impact on our lives. We already have evidence that active gaming experiences can promote physical wellbeing.
It’s also worth thinking about how this time offers an opportunity to completely rethink what and how we learn. Children can access lessons and courses from all over the world, which provides a chance for them to engage with children and teachers from other countries. Even astronauts on the International Space Station have been reading stories to children.
Through all of this, it’s crucial to remember that we’re not simply homeschooling or working from home, but trying hard to do these things in extraordinary times. In the rush to maintain standards and normality, we need to remember that a completely different approach is perfectly okay right now.
Had a great conversation with Dr Alex Fenton and Ryan Mayer about how technology is helping sports figure out their Covid-19 strategy. Check out the full article here and a little video about the article below
I’m really delighted to have published this op ed for CLOT magazine and, especially, to have discovered their wonderful publication through this opportunity. it’s a fantastic site with some amazing articles about incredible art work. This intro into drone art covers one of the major chapters of my new book on DRONES. It’s the chapter that describes where I began with drones and I’m especially attached to it, as it was where I began working with some amazing and lovely people. Check it out HERE.
It’s a really tough time for everyone right now, not least of which is just making sure we are all are keeping healthy, fed, and taking care of ourselves more generally. Universities have been turned upside down and a lot of us are trying to focus on supporting colleagues and students to get through this time, along with being full time carers.
For me personally, research is an important way to stay to stay mentally balanced and so I’ve gone through some real soul searching to figure out what it is about my work that I think still matters.
I wrote this article in the hope that it might allow some of my colleagues to feel that their research still matters. I come from a wide educational background and really want to ensure that all the wonderful work we do in disciplines that are not at all related to this awful crisis is still allowed to continue.
Very excited to publish this article for the Design Exchange, bringing together some of my thoughts about esports and architecture. Some wider work developing around this theme. Check out the article here
When I first started out as a PhD student, a new Professor came into my school and secured me a bursary and was my second supervisor. His name was Professor Trevor Slack and he was a real legend in sports management. He didn’t really get philosophy, but he did understand the value and currency of research and his approach stuck with me throughout my career.
My chapter focuses on “Technology” and covers a raft of issues, from the innovation chain to esports.
Sadly, Trevor never lived to see this publication, but he certainly had a huge influence on my career and I’m delighted to be a part of this book. It’s used on sport management courses all over the world and certainly takes me back to the early days of my career.
It feels like a while ago now, but in March we put a massive amount of energy into the inaugural Digital City Festival, working across the university, closely with the DCF team.
We ran fringe events, took part in the expo, and assisted with a whole range of preparations. I was also very pleased to be part of the steering panel and look forward to the next year!
I was especially proud of the fact that the whole of the university got behind our delivery.
On 10th March, my colleague Dr Maria Stukoff pulled together an amazing esports business mixer event in Manchester, amidst all kinds of cancellations due to coronavirus. It was fantastic to see players, managers, owners, and producers come together to talk about where esports is going and to think about how universities can contribute.
Our Esports Science Insights platform seeks to bring knowledge from academic research to industry pros to help figure out what we know and what we still don’t know about this rapidly expanding world.
On 28th Feb, my colleagues and I at the University of Salford produced an event called ‘Esports for All’, which brought together colleagues from all over the university to examine how esports can expand into a space where everyone feels welcome.
It was a really fantastic afternoon, with friends from the British Esports Association, British Cycling, and NUEL. We covered so much ground, but most interesting for me was how we brought together people from very different perspectives to talk about the continual expansion of this remarkable world of esports.
Recently spoke to DeZeen magazine about stories regarding China’s use of drones to police citizens in the context of the coronavirus. The big story here isn’t really that this may be happening, but that the utilisation of drones by a range of enforcement services is likely to become commonplace and has been enabled by a growing utilisation of drones within military operations.
Zoltan Istvan has attracted a lot of attention in recent years for being the world’s first transhumanist politician. This thoughtful article gives some insight into how transhumanism gained momentum over the last 20 years and what it still needs to go further.
I’m very proud to have published an article about Drones in The Big Issue. The article tells a bit of the story of my journey into this world, leading up to the publication of my new book, which spans everything from environmental research to military applications and artistic works.
