Dr. Serhat Yilmaz is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Law in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences (SSEHS) at Loughborough University. Serhat lectures on various undergraduate and postgraduate courses including the Foundations of Sports Law, Sport Integrity, and Sport Policy, Governance and Law. Serhat is also the programme director of the Professional Certificate Programme for Sports Agents, an executive education that he has developed.

Serhat’s research expertise has two main strands:

  • sports agents
  • protection of young athletes in sport

His research has been awarded funding from the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and UNICEF UK.

Serhat holds a law degree from Istanbul University, an LLM from the University of London (SOAS), Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) from the University of Law, and PhD in Law from the University of Westminster.

Serhat is also an associate lecturer at the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre at Birkbeck (University of London) and the academic member of the Centre for Society, Law and Popular Culture at the Westminster Law School (University of Westminster).

Projects and awards

  • ‘Children before players’: children’s rights and recruitment in the professional football industry (2019, funded by UNICEF, £50,000)
  • Developing an e-learning platform to educate agents in football (2019, funded by HEIF, £54,364)
  • Mapping and identifying child rights issues in the recruitment of young players in football: Current risks and future research agendas (2017, funded by UNICEF, £10,000)

Supervision

  • Yeon Kang, (PhD Awarded in May 2019) Sport as a State's Soft Power Strategy: The Case of South Korea and the UK (Co-Supervised by Prof. Barrie Houlihan)
  • Stacy Gray, (PhD Awarded in October 2018) Achieving Compliance With The World Anti-Doping Code: Learning From The Implementation Of Three Selected International Agreements (Co-Supervised by Prof. Barrie Houlihan)

Journal Reviewer

  • The International Sports Law Journal
  • International Review for the Sociology of Sport
  • European Sport Management Quarterly

Selected Conferences/Talks

  • Analysis of the EU Sports Policy: the Integrity of Sport and Players’ Agents (Intermediaries), Sport and EU Annual Conference 2019, Sport and EU, Malta, 27th June 2019
  • Protection of Minors in Football, Football Law 2019 - Player Transfers, Agents, Politics and the Business of Football, Law in Sport, London, 22nd and 23rd May 2019
  • Contextualising Child Trafficking in Football: Forms, Factors and Dynamics, High-level panel session on Time for Europe to Stand Against Child Trafficking in Sport, European Parliament, Brussels, 16th October 2018
  • The EU Sports Policy and the Regulation of Players' Agents: a Theoretical Analysis of Socio-cultural Perspective, UACES 2016 Annual Conference, The Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies, London, 05-SEP- 2016

Featured publications

Book chapters

Reports

Blogs