Playing up to Precarity; Or,the Lost Generation

Abstract

This article considers the development of an academic precariat and its impact on sport history. It discusses the author’s own experiences as a sport historian and the impact of academic unemployment on a generation of would-be sport historians. It argues that not only is there an academic precariat within sport history but that this is the result of internal and external factors. Externally it reflects the challenges to the academy from market reforms and the neo-liberalization of the academic world, and internally it reflects the failure of senior academics to resist those reforms thereby allowing junior colleagues to take the full force of their impact. The result is a lost generation of sport historians.