Speaker Biographies: Countdown to kickoff symposium

Speaker Biographies: Countdown to kickoff symposium

Simon Chadwick

Simon is Professor of Sports Enterprise at Salford University Manchester, where he is also a Co-Director of the Centre for Sports Business. He is also a Founding Co-Director of the China Soccer Observatory, part of the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute. With a background in business and management, Chadwick has a strong interest in sport – especially in East and West Asia. Among his recent activities has been a study of global rugby, undertaken in conjunction with Mastercard (a title sponsor of the Rugby World Cup).

Hilary Frank

Hilary graduated from SOAS in 1989. She spent six years working with the team that delivered the Nagano Winter Olympics (1998), and four years with the team that delivered the Japan/Korea FIFA World Cup (2002). She was a member of the Japanese delegations to the Albertville, Barcelona, Lillehammer, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Sydney Olympics, and worked with the JOC at the London Olympics. She moved back to her native Cornwall in 2004 and for the past five years has served as a councillor on Cornwall Council. Since 2014 she has also been working with the head of the organising committee for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. She worked with the Japanese organising committee during RWC England 2015, worked at the Pool Draw in Kyoto in 2017 and will work in Japan for the duration of the Rugby World Cup in 2019.

Mike Galbraith

Mike first played rugby in Japan in 1973 for the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club (YC&AC), Japan’s oldest western sports club. Later captained the club team and became the club historian after rediscovering a lot of the club’s lost history, including the fact that the club’s rugby section has its roots in the Yokohama Foot Ball Club, founded in January 1866, which appears to make it oldest rugby club in Asia and one of the oldest in the world. He is researching the early history of western sports in Japan and is currently doing an MA in Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University.

Helen Macnaughtan

Helen is Chair of the SOAS Japan Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in International Business & Management for Japan. Her research interests focus on a broad range of topics relating to gender, employment and sport in Japan. She has previously published on the history of women’s volleyball in Japan with reference to the gold medal victory for the ‘Oriental Witches’ at the Tokyo 1964 Olympics.

Phil McGowan

Phil is Curator at the World Rugby Museum, Twickenham. He has written three books about rugby history, and spent three years living and working in Japan (2002-2005).

J. Simon Rofe (Chair)

Simon is Reader in Diplomatic and International Studies in the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, and Programme Director for MA Global Diplomacy, at SOAS University of London. His research focuses upon diplomacy, international and global history, with a particular focus on the diplomacy of sport. He is the author and editor of a number of books and academic articles including Sport and Society: Games within Games (MUP, 2018).