Professor Dilwyn Porter

Job: Emeritus Professor

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Humanities and Performing Arts

Research group(s): International Centre for Sports History and Culture

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 250 6278

E: Dilwyn.Porter@dmu.ac.uk

W: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/sportshistory

Social Media:

 

Personal profile

  • Professor of Sports History and Culture at DMU since 2012.
  • Visiting Professor in Irish Studies, Boston College Irish Studies Centre, 2012-13.
  • Co-convenor Sport and Leisure History Research Seminar, Institute of Historical Research
  • Editor Sport in History, 2004-08.
  • Experienced PhD supervisor, 12 PhD completions.
  • Teaching and research interests in the history of British sport generally, amateurism in British and Irish sport, sport and national identity, business and sport.

Research group affiliations

  • Sports History and Culture
  • History

Publications and outputs

Click here for a full listing of Dilwyn Porter's publications and outputs.

Key research outputs

‘Peacefully at Wembley Stadium on 20 April 1974: the quiet death nof amateur football in England’, in S. Wagg (eds), Myths and Milestones in the History of Sport (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2011).

‘Cornwall and rugby union: sport and identity in a place apart’, in S. Crosson and P.Dine (eds), Sport, Representation and Evolving Identities in Europe (Berne: Peter Lang, 2010), 263-86.

‘Entrepreneurship’, in S.W. Pope and J. Nauright (eds), Routledge Companion to Sports History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 197-215.

‘Egg and chips with the Connellys; Remembering 1966’, Sport in History, 29 (3), (2009), 519-39.

‘”Coming on with laps and bounds in the Metropolis”: London football in the era of the 1908 Olympic Games’, London Journal, 34 (2), (2009), 101-22.

Research interests/expertise

  • Sports history and culture
  • Amateurism in sport
  • Business history and sport
  • National identity and sport
  • Sport in Cornwall

Areas of teaching

  • Sports History and Culture
  • Postgraduate student research supervision

Qualifications

BA (Hons) Manchester, PhD (Manchester), FRHS 

Courses taught

  • MA Sports History and Culture
  • International MA in the Humanities, Management and Law of Sport

Honours and awards

  • Visiting Professorship at Boston College, Centre for Irish Studies, 2012-13
  • Invited to give the opening address at the first Anglo-Japanese Sports History Conference, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan (05/11)
  • Invited to lecture at Saitama, Waseda and Chubu Universities, Japan (05/11)
  • Honorary Research Associate, Business History Unit, London School of Economics, 2008>

Membership of external committees

  • British Society of Sports History, Aberdare Prize Committee, 2008-12; currently chair; committee awards prize for best academic sports history monograph published each year;
  • Conference for the History of Retailing and Distribution, Retail History New Research Prize, Panel Member, 2008-09
  • Convener, Sport and Leisure History Research Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 2008>
  • Birmingham and Midland Institute, Council Member, 2013>

Membership of professional associations and societies

  • Association of Business Historians
  • British Society of Sports History
  • Business Archives Council
  • European Business History Association
  • European Committee for Sports History

Conference attendance

‘Amateurism in British and Irish sport: some reflections’, Boston College Irish Studies Centre, Dublin, symposium on Amateurism in Irish Sport, (11/12)

‘”We don’t want amateurs, get professionals”; the end of Victorianism and the erosion of the mature hegemony in British sport’, North American Society for Sports History Annual Conference, University of California, Berkeley, (06/12)

‘Sport as a commodity: where the tangible meets the experiential’, Nottingham Business School, Pay and Play: the history of the leisure business in twentieth century Britain (05/12)

London’s Football culture, c.1880-=1920’, University of Westminster, Sport and the City Conference, (04/12)

‘God’s footballer; Rev K.R.G. Hunt – FA Cup-winner, international footballer and muscular Christian’ University of Worcester, Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts Research Seminar (04/12)

‘The London Financial press and the Suez crisis’, British Academy Symposium, The Media and the Financial Crisis in Comparative and Historical Perspectives, City University (12/11)

‘The Business of Sport and the Sport of Business’, Sport Leisure and the Creative Industries: Historical Perspectives Conference , ICSHC, De Montfort University (09/11): conference organiser

‘Corinth revisited: the Corinthians, football history and football historiography’, British Society of Sports History, Annual Conference, London Metropolitan University (09/11)

‘English football and the state of the British nation, c1980-2000’, Sport and Leisure History Research Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London (06/11)

‘The end of football’s maximum wage and the modernization of British sport in the 1960s’, Conference marking the 50th anniversary of the abolition of the maximum wage, ICSHC, De Montfort University, (06/11)

‘The end of the amateur hegemony in British sport, c.1960-2000’, Keynote presentation; First Anglo-Japanese Sports History Conference, Hitotsubashi University, Japan, (05/11)*

‘Rev K.R.G. Hunt: muscular Christian and famous Footballer’, Sporting Lives Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University, (12/10)

‘A Game of Consequences: the London Financial Press and the Suez War, 1956’, Seventh Annual Forum on the Economic and Business History of Egypt and the Middle East, American University, Cairo, (05/10)*

‘The Victorian Sporting Revolution’, Parnell Society, Avondale, Ireland, (08/09)*

‘Football Businesses in Soccer City: London, c.1890-1910’, Association of Business Historians Annual Conference, University of Liverpool, (07/09)

‘Representing England’s Divided House: the Olympic Games of 1908 and English football’s great split’, Olympic City Conference, Centre for Contemporary British History, University of London (07/08)*

‘And shall Trelawny Live? Cornish rugby and national identity’, Representing Sport: Forms and Issues Conference, National University of Ireland Galway, (05/08)*

‘Sport, Business and the Media in Britain since 1960’, German Association for the Study of British History and Politics, Annual Conference, Mulheim/Ruhr, (05/08)*

(With Dr Richard Coopey), ‘Beyond the fringe: salesmen and the web of corporate control in Britain since 1850’, Direct Selling and the Evolution of Modern Marketing Conference, Department of Management, University of Reading, (02/08)*

‘War minus the shooting: George Orwell, Moscow Dynamo and sport as a cause of ill-will between nations’ Sports Studies Workshop, University of Keele, (01/08)*

*Paid for in full or in part by conference organisers

Other forms of public presentation

The 2012 London Olympics as Project, Spectacle and Legacy: contribution to round table discussion at Centre for Contemporary British History, London, 11 July 2008;

England 4 Austria 3: Stamford Bridge, London 7.Dezember 1932’, in Wo die Wuchtel fleigt. Legendere Orte des Wiener Fussballs (Wien Museum, Vienna, 2008), contribution to exhibition catalogue.

Consultancy work

  • ‘Sport and the British’, BBC Radio 4 series researcher 2010-12;
  • External consultant, student experience, School of History and Anthropology, Queens University, Belfast, 2011;
  • External consultant, review of taught postgraduate courses, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, 2011;
  • External reviewer, periodic review, School of History and Anthropology, Queens University, Belfast, 2010.

Current research students

  • Christoph Wagner, PhD, PT, 1st supervisor
  • Steven Crewe, PhD, PT, 1st supervisor
  • Regina Fitzpatrick, PhD, PT, 1st supervisor
  • Graeme Moir, PhD, PT, 2nd supervisor
  • Madelaine Armstrong, PT, 2nd supervisor

Professional esteem indicators

Sport in History, editor, 2004-08
Sport in History, member of editorial board, 2009>

Journal Refereeing:

British Journal of Sociology
Business History Review
Cold War Sport
International Journal of the History of Sport 
Sport in History
Twentieth-Century British History

Case studies

Current Radio 4 series, ‘Sport and the British’ has significant impact; documentation being collated by ICSHC.