Dr J. Simon Rofe

Dr J. Simon Rofe is world leading expert in Sports Diplomacy. Simon has an international research profile addressing sports diplomacy, with a particular focus upon the relationship of the sporting ecosystem with diplomatic practice.  

 Simon is Reader and Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Leeds (2022- ), a Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Programme Director for the MA Leadership in Sports at the Institute for Sport Humanities and Visiting Professor at the Centre of Sports Law, Sports Policies and Sports Diplomacy of the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law (SLPD Centre). Alongside a team of European experts, Simon recently completed a role as a lead investigator for an Erasmus+ grant (1.3 million Euros) entitled ‘Towards a European Sports Diplomacy Strategy’. He is a standing member of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Physical Education and Sport (CIGEPS); Senior Advisor to the UNESCO Chair in Sports Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and is the independent academic advisor for the UK’s Cross-Government International Sport Working Group. 

 He developed the first MA module globally to address ‘Sport and Diplomacy: More than a Game’, following a role in the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) in 2012. Simon founded the Sport, Diplomacy, and Governance Hub, which provides for multi-directional knowledge exchange, and has established a strong multinational network of relevant contacts in the realms of Sport and Diplomacy. He co-directed, with Dr Lindsay S. Krasnoff, the Basketball Diplomacy in Africa Oral History Project, with a particular focus on the Basketball Africa League.  

 Overall, Simon has worked with numerous stakeholders from across the sporting and diplomatic realms including, UNESCO & UNITAR, foreign services, and government agencies from around the world, anti-doping associations, bidding and organising committees. 

 He is the author and editor of a numerous books and articles including the following: 

1. Sport and Diplomacy: Games within Games (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018):  

1. Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development SfD: A Discourse of Challenges and Opportunity, Journal of Global Sport Management 2021 

1. ‘Scholarship and Sports Diplomacy: the Case of Japan and the United Kingdom’ with Verity Postlethwaite, Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society. 

1. ‘The Untold Story of FIFA’s Diplomacy and the 1966 World Cup: North Korea, Africa and Sir Stanley Rous’. w/ Professor Alan Tomlinson, The International History Review, 2019 DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2019.1593218;  

1. ‘Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework.’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 27 (2). pp. 212-230. 2016;