1st Edition
Football, Development and Peace Local Projects in Global Contexts
Acknowledgements
1. Football, development, and peace: Concepts, theories, agencies, and methods
2. Northern Ireland after the Omagh bombing: An introduction to community peace projects and the role of professional football clubs in sports diplomacy
3. Football and peace promotion in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia: From Sarajevo to Srebrenica
4. Engaging with victims of terrorism in Russia: Football as a "decoy" in Beslan
5. Football and the reintegration of asylum seekers and immigrants in Albania
6. Providing refuge and education in the "murder capital of the world": TEFL and futsal in Venezuela
7. Playing football and building peace? Reintegrating child ex-combatants in Liberia
8. Soccer, African refugees, and First Nations communities in Australia
9. The impacts, challenges, and limitations of short-term football-for-development projects
References
Biography
Joel Rookwood is the Director of Sport & Exercise Management at University College Dublin in Ireland. Joel has worked at seven universities in four countries over the last 20 years. He also has extensive experience in sports media, mega-events, and sport-for-development. Joel has worked on 33 SDP projects across six continents over the past two decades. He has conducted research at 25 football mega-events, including the last six FIFA Men’s World Cups. Joel has also worked in applied sports performance settings, serving as Head of Research at Aalborg Football Club in Denmark from 2023 to 2025. Joel is the co-chair of the global research organisation The Football Collective. His latest books include Sport, Peace and Development: Critical Global Challenges (2025), Sports Fanaticism on Social Media Platforms: Security Implications and Counter-Policy (2025), and The Sport Mega Events of the 2020s: Governance, Impacts and Controversies (Routledge, 2024).
