Martin Polley

Martin Polley is a Professor of History and the Director of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He previously taught at the University of Winchester and the University of Southampton. He has published widely on the social, cultural, and political history of sport, and on sport’s community and local history. He is also interested in sporting heritage, and in historiographical and methodological questions for sports historians. His publications include Moving the Goalposts: A History of Sport and Society Since 1945 (1998), Sport History: A Practical Guide (2007), and The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage 1612–2012 (2011). Professor Polley has spoken at conferences in the UK, Canada, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Portugal and Japan, and has discussed his work in the media in the UK, Slovenia, Canada, the USA and Japan. He is a member of Historic England’s Blue Plaques Panel. His current work on the Cotswold Olimpicks seeks to provide a long history of a small event, with an emphasis on the ways in which power, patronage and play have intersected in a small community festival over four centuries.