Dr Mark Doidge

Dr Mark Doidge is currently a Reader in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. After completing a Law degree at Kingston University in the 1990s, he worked in logistics in a multinational telecommunication company in Devon. After transferring the logistics to a new facility in China, he undertook an MA in Ancient History at Exeter University, before completing a PhD in Sociology on Italian football fandom. Mark is an active member of the British Sociological Association (BSA), where he is a trustee for Membership Services and convenor of the Sport Studies Group. He is also Director of the Anti-Discrimination Division of Football Supporters Europe (FSE), as well as being a trustee of Pledgeball (an environmental charity) and Love Football, Hate Racism, and an advisory group member of the Football Supporters Association’s Fans For Diversity.

Dr Doidge is an expert in the sociology of European football fan cultures and political activism. He is the author of Football Italia: Italian Football in an Age of Globalization (2015, Bloomsbury Academic) and co-author of Ultras: the passion and performance of contemporary football fandom (2020, Manchester University Press, wtih Kossakovski and Mintert), and Collective Action and Football Fandom (2018, PalgraveMacmillan, with Cleland, Millward and Widdop). Dr Doidge is also co-author of The Short Guide to Sociology (2020, Policy Press, with Saini), and co-editor of Sociologists’ Tales (2015, Policy Press, with Twamley and Scott) and Transforming Sport (2018, Routledge, with Carter and Burdsey).

Dr Doidge’s latest research focuses on the role football can play in our understanding of important social issues such as climate change, hate crime, and refugees & migration. He has won AHRC funding on football and hate crime (an AHRC Network Grant on Football and Hate Crime, and an AHRC UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Grant on Online Hate). He is also researching the role football can play in communicating about climate change and has worked with Pledgeball and the Football Supporters Association to develop toolkits. In addition, he researches how football fans are helping refugees, both through practical support in camps and local communities, and through consciousness raising and fundraising. He is also interested in the role sport more generally can play in helping refugees. He has recently worked in partnership with Brighton Table Tennis Club on a Sport England funded 'Refugee Integration Project' and a British Academy funded project on Football and Refugees.

• Trustee for Membership Services, British Sociological Association (BSA)
• Convenor of the Sport Studies Group, British Sociological Association (BSA)
• Director of the Anti-Discrimination Division of Football Supporters Europe (FSE)
• Trustee of Pledgeball (an environmental charity)
• Trustee of Love Football, Hate Racism
• Advisory group member of the Fans For Diversity campaign of Football Supporters Association (FSA)

• Amann, J. and Doidge, M. (2023) “I hadn’t realised that change is not a difficult thing”: mobilising football fans on climate change. Sociology: DOI: 10.1177/00380385221142211
• Kearns, C., Sinclair, G., Black, J., Doidge, M., Fletcher, T., Kilvington, D., Liston, K., Lynn, T. and Rosati, P. A (2022) Scoping Review into Academic Research Conducted into Online Hate and Sport. Communication and Sport. [Online First: DOI: 10.1177/21674795221132728].
• Koopmans, B. and Doidge M. (2022) ‘They play together, they laugh together’: Sport, Play and Fun in Refugee Sport Projects, Sport in Society, 25(3): 537-550. DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2022.2017816
• Doidge, M., Kossakowski, R. and Mintert, S. (2020) Ultras: The Passion and Performance of Contemporary Football Fandom. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Doidge, M. and Saini, R. (2020) The Short Guide to Sociology. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Doidge, M., Keech, M. and Sandri, E. (2020) ‘Active Integration’: Sport taking an active role in the integration of refugees, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 12(2): 305-319. DOI: 10.1080/19406940.2020.1717580
  
• Doidge, M. and Sandri, E. (2019) ‘Friends that last a lifetime’: The importance of emotions amongst volunteers working with refugees in Calais’ British Journal of Sociology, 70(2): 463-480. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12484
• Cleland, J., Doidge, M., Millward, P., and Widdop, P. (2018) Collective Action and Football Fandom: A Relational Sociological Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Doidge, M. and Lieser, M. (Eds.) (2018) The Ultras: the global development of a fan phenomenon. Sport in Society Special Issue, Volume 21 (7).
• Carter, T., Burdsey, D. and Doidge, M (Eds.) (2018) Transforming Sport: Knowledge, Structures, Practice. London: Routledge (pp 261).
• Doidge, M. (2015) Football Italia: Italian Football in an Age of Globalisation. London: Bloomsbury.
• Twamley, K., Doidge, M., and Scott, A. (2015) Sociologists’ Tales: Contemporary Narratives on Sociological Thought and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press (pp 304).