PhD defence: Football, Feminisation, Fans

Sociological Studies in a European Context

Svenja-Maria Mintert

PhD thesis

The overarching objective of this PhD thesis was defined to develop new knowledge and understanding about the contribution of football to gendered identity construction and negotiation.

While given the focus of this thesis on women in football consumption in a European context, the aforementioned intentions were to research the gender-specific and acting out of fandom as well as the intersection between gender and national identity.

In the five different studies, this thesis explored the role of gender in football and fan cultures with regard to gender-specific patterns of cross-cultural communication and identification.

Furthermore, it investigated how the increase in women’s presence in football has caused new discourses to evolve and to shed light to what extent the feminisation of European football has modified audience perception and interpretation of the football game.

Given the comprehensiveness of time, this PhD thesis has marked out for itself an almost natural niche and delved deeper in the phenomenon ‘The feminisation of football’ by addressing the issue of women’s movement into football, the role of women’s football in the media, and foremost the complex issue of origins of female football fans.

2015, 207 pages,
ISBN 978 87 7611 880 8

Time

4 May 2015, 14:00

Place

St. Auditorium, Nørre Allé 53, 1., 2200 Copenhagen N.

Opponents 

Associate Professor Laila Ottesen (chair), Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Albrecht Sonntag, Associate Dean for international accreditations at ESSCA, School of Management and Director of the EU-Asia Institute, France.

Annette Hofmann, Ludwigsburg University of Education, Germany.

Supervisor

Professor Gertrud Pfister, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.