Diplomacy and Sport

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the evolution and change in diplomatic practice in the contemporary digitised world, through a range of conceptual tools, cases and issue areas. The main objectives are:

A) To equip students with theoretical approaches, concepts and debates enabling the critical interrogation of diplomacy in the contemporary digitised world through theoretical and empirical exploration of the relationship of diplomacy to the following key organising categories: sovereignty, representation, communication, power, knowledge production, gender, and sustainability. In so doing, it aims to uncover the role of both state and non-state actors in diplomacy in the contemporary digitised world, thus adopting an enlarged approach to diplomacy, entailing diplomacies in the plural--of multiple actors, in multiple issue areas, and of multiple modalities.

B) To showcase skills and various ways of being a diplomat in the contemporary digital world, through introducing and unpacking the real-life applications of such skills and ways, integrating practitioner contributions where possible; as well as through examining various and often overlooked pathways of practicing diplomacy (such as public diplomacy, paradiplomacy, protodiplomacy, NGO and advocacy diplomacy).

The aim of this module is to understand the main features, concepts and practices of international negotiations. It provides an overview of the most important elements of negotiation and offers an application to a number of case studies

The aim of this module is to understand the role that sport plays in political and diplomatic issues at a national and international level. Using contemporary examples from developed, transitioning, developing, and fuel-based economies, the module will explore how sport can be used to positive (e.g., facilitating socio-economic plans) or negative (e.g., whitewashing human rights violations) ends. In doing so, the module aims to promote a critical, evidence-based understanding of the interplay between sport, politics, and diplomacy.

The aim of this module is to give students an opportunity to explore grand challenges facing our global society and to propose imaginative solutions to specific challenges in one or more country.

Students will critically reflect on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals and think about how Loughborough University's Creating Better Futures. Together Strategy might contribute to them.

Students will engage with ideas and approaches to possible solutions from their own programme and gain diverse insights from Loughborough University London's interdisciplinary ecosystem. This will involve solution-oriented thinking and a balance between criticality and possibility, leading to a deep understanding of grand challenges and imagining creative responses to them.

The aim of this module is to provide students with an understanding of:

• The impact of climate change and environmental degradation on sports performance and business at the community, elite, and pro levels. Using contemporary examples from varied geographic contexts, the module will explore how sport can identify, interpret, and adapt to mounting climate challenges such as extreme heat conditions and natural disasters.
• The ways sport organisations and sportspeople can reduce emissions and sport's sizeable impact on the natural environment. In doing so, the module aims to promote a critical, evidence-based understanding of the interplay between sport and the natural environment.
• How to quantify the impacts of a sport organisation on the environment and measure the impacts moving forwards, using greenhouse gas reporting as an example.

The aims of this module are to give the student the opportunity to study a subject, business problem or research question in depth and to research the issues surrounding the subject or background to the problem.
The module will equip the student with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding to embark on their individual research project and they will be guided through the three options available to them to complete their dissertation:

• A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choice
• A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments
• A full professional placement within an organisation during which time they will complete a project as part of their role in agreement with the organisation (subject to a suitable placement position being obtained)

Students will achieve a high level of understanding in the subject area and produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss this research in depth and with rigour. 

The aim of this module is to help you understand and assess the global economy and the political debates and forces that shape it. Students are introduced to the history of the global economy and then the main theoretical approaches for understanding how it has evolved and operates, such as liberalism, mercantilism and Marxism. These are applied through the exploration of a number of topics.

The module looks at the history and governance of the global economy, the role of the state and non-state actors, the the global trading and financial systems, and crises and opportunities in the global economy. Students are placed into small groups to study an individual small or medium sized economy over the duration of the module. Students will have to focus on their assigned country in presenting a plan for their essay and in their final essay.

The overarching aim of the module is to provide students with a wider understanding of theories and debates in International Relation and Security through a specialised focus on the emerging concept, debates and practices around polycrisis. Traditional and critical theories of IR and security serve multiple lenses through which to interrogate and critique polycrisis while simultaneously critically assessing whether and in what ways they might be adequate, obsolete, deficient or else affording analytical and practical opportunities for making sense of the polycrisis and steering its understanding towards sustainable social change.

The aims of this module are to:

• Become familiar with a range of research methodologies to better understand the role and adoption of insight and research in the sport business industry.
• Examine the scope and size of the sport business industry globally and the challenges this brings for insight and research.

The module aims to introduce students to the way the changing nature of world order has affected societies globally. Transformations in the world order have brought to the fore risks and challenges that indiscriminately impact peoples around the world. The module explores the nature of these transformations, namely the agency and autonomy that individuals have in mitigating change. Key emphasis will be placed on the identifying the most successful strategies that societies have designed and implemented in order to adapt to changes in the world order.

Some of the most important challenges derived from the evolution of the world order that the module aims to discuss include conflict and geopolitics, global inequality, innovation and progress, resilience and sustainability or migration.

The experience of societies in the Global South will be given greater consideration, with a special focus on the impact that the BRICS group of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has on the world order. In broader terms, the module evaluates the various strategies that states, international organisations, businesses or NGOs have developed in order to cope with change in the world order.

The aims of the module are to understand the importance of communication with a sport organisation's stakeholders (e.g., fans, media, sponsors, community, employees), the various channels and mechanisms by which to communicate with such stakeholders, and to identify the most appropriate channels of communication for a given situation depending on several contextual factors.

The module will provide students with an understanding of the principles of communication and public relations and the ability to employ communication strategies specifically in sport-related contexts.

Advances in machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing are forging new responses to global challenges from climate change to the creation of resilient supply chains. A.I. is also changing how creative industries innovate and transforming performance analytics and injury prediction in sport.

Despite its extraordinary potential, A.I. raises profound concerns about the displacement of jobs, the respect for privacy and intellectual property and the risks of algorithmic discrimination. The growing possibility of general A.I. also poses fundamental questions about the future of humanity in a world of super intelligence.

The aim of this module is to examine the evolving societal consequences of A.I. and to explore how governments, international organisations and civil society groups are trying to create safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems.

The aims of this module are to:

• Provide students with an opportunity to be exposed to project-based teamwork in diverse settings (understood in this context as involving a range of multidisciplinary, multicultural and demographic elements in differing configurations), aiming to strengthen their cooperative and collaborative working skills and competence, while raising awareness and appreciation of diversity itself.
• Provide students with hands on experience of identifying, framing and resolving practice oriented and real-world based challenges and problems, using creativity, critical enquiry and appropriate tools to achieve valuable and relevant solutions.
• Support the development of students' ability to engage in critical enquiry and individual reflection, as well as to apply individual strengths and skills, building on their own educational backgrounds.
• Provide students with opportunities for networking with stakeholders, organisations and corporations, aiming to enhance the competence and skills needed to connect to relevant parties and build up future professional opportunities.

The aims of this module are to:

• Examine the nature of sports integrity and the threats to it presented by the manipulation of sporting outcomes and corrupt governance practices in both national and international contexts, including key legal and regulatory areas.
• Develop a greater awareness of ethical issues in relation to combatting sport integrity issues.
• Explain the role of the board, and senior management, in providing organisational leadership and implementing cultural change, with particular emphasis on composition and values-based leadership models.
• Consider the importance of professional conduct, athlete reputation and public confidence in sport.
• Critically review a range of legal and regulatory issues in sport.

This module has two main aims. The first is to expose students to concrete development challenges experienced by different stakeholders (policy makers, communities and industry representatives, etc) in developing countries.

The second is to experiment with the ways through which the immersion into the field can inform the identification of development challenges and the formulation of research questions and action plans in the area of development.

Note that there are additional travel costs involved in taking this module.

The aims of this module are to give the student the opportunity to study a subject, business problem or research question in depth and to research the issues surrounding the subject or background to the problem.
The module will equip the student with the relevant skills, knowledge and understanding to embark on their individual research project and they will be guided through the three options available to them to complete their dissertation:

• A desk based research project that could be set by an organisation or could be a subject of the student's choice
• A project that involves collection of primary data from within an organisation or based on lab and/or field experiments
• A full professional placement within an organisation during which time they will complete a project as part of their role in agreement with the organisation (subject to a suitable placement position being obtained)

Students will achieve a high level of understanding in the subject area and produce a written thesis or project report which will discuss this research in depth and with rigour.