Wray Vamplew

Emeritus Professor in Sports Studies at the University of StirlingI worked in Australia for eighteen years, latterly as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Flinders University of South Australia, before taking up an appointment at De Montfort University where I established a centre of excellence in sports history.

In 2001 I joined Stirling University and was appointed as Scotland's first Chair in Sports History. I have authored and edited more than twenty books and over a hundred academic papers and reports, and have wide experience as a consultant for sports, education, government and media organisations in Australia and Britain.

My book Pay Up And Play the Game (Cambridge U.P., 1988), a study of professional sport in Britain, won the inaugural North American Society for Sport History international book award.I was also the recipient of the Australian Sport Commission's National Sport Science Education Award for my work on sports violence. My expertise lies in the area of sports social science including history, economics and quantitative analysis.

My new book, Games People Played, is available from Reaction Books, 1 May 2023. It's the first truly global history of sport, covering everything from curling to baseball.

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Games People Played is, surprisingly, the first global history of sport. Wray Vamplew shows how sport has been practised, experienced and made meaningful by players and fans, and assesses how sports have developed and diffused across the globe. He examines not only how sport is sociable and health-giving, but how economics has turned sport into a huge consumer industry. Sport’s dark side – its environmental impact, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, discrimination and match fixing – is explored in detail. Covering everything from curling to baseball, boxing to motor racing, this book, now in paperback, will appeal to anyone who plays, watches or enjoys sport.