The Chair, based in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, is co-led by Prof Richard Giulianotti and Dr Rachel Sandford, with support from deputies Dr Oliver Hooper and Dr Serhat Yilmaz.
On 8 December, the UK was re-elected for a further two-year term as Vice-Chair of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Physical Education and Sport (CIGEPS), which is the main global policymaking committee in these areas across the United Nations system.
Prof Giulianotti and Dr Sandford will continue to represent the UK in this Vice-Chair role, with the support of the UK Delegation, led by the UK Ambassador to UNESCO, Anna Nsubuga, and Maxim Polya-Vitry, UK Deputy Permanent Delegate to UNESCO.
Prof Giulianotti and Dr Sandford joined over 150 participants (including ministers, governmental officials, business leaders, NGO representatives, athletes, and academics) from more than 35 countries at the first edition of the high-level forum, ‘Future in Play: The International Forum on Inclusive Sport and Physical Education’, on 27-28 November, staged in Santiago, Chile, and convened by UNESCO, the Ministry of Sport of Chile, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF).
The forum highlighted how sport and physical education can offer inclusive, equitable, and safe environments and create opportunities for marginalised groups, such as girls/women and persons with disabilities.
It saw the launch of the ‘Santiago Roadmap’, which aims to convert policy commitments into practical actions, centred on five pillars: more inclusive, equitable and safe sport and PE policies; increased investments, research, and evidence; stronger capacities for implementation of resources and programmes; intersectional approaches that ‘leave no one behind’; and aligned sport education pathways, curricula, training, and community initiatives for inclusion.
Also, Lillie McGuckian and Mashaer Alyami, two Doctoral Researchers in SSEHS and co-leads of the award-winning Loughborough UNESCO Student Network (LUSN), represented the UNESCO Chair at the World Futures Day 2025 event on 2 December at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
In addition to participation at the event sessions, their visit included an extended meeting with UNESCO’s Sport Section, headed by Philipp Muller-Wirth, and shorter meetings with Anna Nsubuga, UK Ambassador to UNESCO, Gustavo Merino, Director of Social Policies at UNESCO, and even the new Director-General of UNESCO, Khaled El-Enany.