Last updated by kprzemek on 2014-11-21. Originally submitted by tomski on 2012-10-09.
On September 7-8, 2012, Professor Wojciech Lipoński took part in the Annual Conference of the British Society of Sports History hosted by the School of Humanities of the University of Glasgow. During the conference, Professor Lipoński delivered a paper titled Truth in Sports History, in which he showed that the use of sport for media, marketing and propaganda purposes led to inevitable distortions in sports history. The paper focused on specific examples of propagandist abuses in totalitarian states, e.g. deleting the names of Jewish athletes from sports statistics in Nazi Germany or of politically troublesome athletes in the USSR and its satellite communist states before 1989. Another distortion in sport history can be found in modern “official” publications sponsored by various institutions, e.g. sports organizations and associations. Such sponsors choose not to publish some facts that may be inconvenient to them. Also, the media contribute to the false image of sport, e.g. by pandering to mass audiences, creating an artificial atmosphere of enormous sporting battles and tournaments to attract viewers, and presenting distorted facts from the careers of elite athletes.
On his way to and from the BSSH conference Professor Lipoński visited a number of cultural centers in Germany, France and the United Kingdom in connection with his research for an upcoming publication History of European Culture. Professor Lipoński visited the largest European art festival DOKUMENTA, held every five years in Kassel, Germany; the British Museum, Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; the Riverside Museum and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow; and Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. He also made photographic records in Dover’s Hill near Chipping Campden - the site of the Cotswold Olimpick Games (as spelled in the 17th century) founded by Robert Dover in 1612 and held until 1853 – the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, and in various monuments of art and architecture in Feuchtwangen. Professor Lipoński’s research trip was in half funded by the Faculty of English.
Photo galery here
Prepared and submitted by Tomasz Skirecki
