Our Blog

On June 1^st, 2023, more than 80 participants, including university students from Niš (Serbia) attended online the tenth EAS Cafè “Dual career as European sports diplomacy”, moderated by Prof. Antonio Sanchez-Pato, Director of the Sports Science Area at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, Spain) and member of the EAS Executive Committee.

Prof. Sanchez-Pato introduced the theme of the Cafè by offering the definitions of sport diplomacy and examples of this powerful tool to improve the dialogue, relations, and cultural exchanges between communities, to defuse tensions and to build bridges between countries. He also highlighted the role of education of sportspersons whose experiences of a globalized sport environment could help them developing skills useful in the diplomatic arena. Finally, he emphasized the potential of e-learning to support dual career worldwide, especially in considering that some European universities historically have a relevant cultural exchange in other continents, such as Latin America.

The first speaker, Prof. Felipe Rodrigues Da Costa, Assistant Professor at the Physical Education Faculty of the Brasilia University (FEF/UnB) and Coordinator of the Post-graduate Program in Physical Education, summarized the development of dual career in Latin America, starting from his post-doc experience at the University of Coimbra and his cooperation with Prof. Antonio Figueiredo, Member of the EAS Excecutive Committee. He illustrated not only his personal dedication to the development of dual career research in Latin America that resulted in a tremendous increase of scientific contributions during the past few years, but also the capitalization of the good practice of EAS for establishing a dual career Ibero-American network, which resulted in the organization of international seminars and the participation of Brazilian delegates to the EAS conference.

The second speaker, Prof. Karim Chamari, Head of Aspetar Injury and Illness Prevention Program (ASPREV) at Aspetar, Doha (Qatar) presented his difficulties in combining his academic and sport careers as a Tunisian Olympic windsurfer at the Barcelona Games in 1992. Whilst in Tunisia he struggled to have dual career arrangements at academic level, as a PhD student at the University of Montpellier (France) he engaged in personal negotiations with his PhD tutor to have a 4-month break from his research studies to prepare for the Olympic Games. Suffering a sudden end of his sport career due to an unexpected severe pathology, Prof. Chamari benefited from his bio-medical studies to recover his condition. Despite a lack of institutional dual career support, Prof. Chamari’s determination made him a well-prepared coach of professional soccer players and one of the most rewarded outstanding scholars.

In summarizing the general discussion, Prof. Sanchez-Pato underlined the main role of dual career in establishing understanding between cultures, scientific research, and cooperation between organizations. He also urged young researcher to send their application to the Bengt Nybelius Scholarship before July 1, 2023, and anticipated that an EAS survey will be mailed to its internal and external stakeholders to collect their opinions regarding the past and future EAS activities. Before closing the Tenth EAS Cafè, the participants were informed that the next EAS Cafè will be organized in fall, after the Annual Conference to be held in Gaeta next October 2-4, 2023.