Tammy: Before we get into your research, can you tell us about your educational path, where you are now and what you’re currently doing professionally?

Adam: Yes. I went to undergrad at a small liberal arts school in Ohio called the College of Wooster. I played soccer there. Sport has been a huge part of my life, for my entire life. In my undergraduate year I majored in psychology, and, during my senior thesis year, I became really interested in the intersection between sport, helping people, and the mental health field. Over time my interests naturally led me to the SDP research that I’m currently doing. After I graduated from College of Wooster, I took a few years off, did research and some self-exploration, and decided to apply to the Sport and Exercise Psychology (SEP) program at West Virginia University (WVU).

I was in the SEP program for about six years and graduated with my PhD last August. Upon graduation, I have been working in private practice as both a counselor and a sport psychology mental performance consultant, which has been a really rewarding experience. I think SDP has helped me just understand people in a different way and learn more about the human experience, which has been a really rewarding experience.

Tammy: Yes, awesome. You answered this a little bit, but can you explain a little more about how you were first introduced to Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), and also what or who influenced your decision to pursue that line of research?

Adam: Tammy, a funny story because it all starts with the TV show Survivor. My family has been big fans of the show Survivor since it came out. I think the third season was in Africa and the winner was this young, former professional soccer player, who used his winnings to start a nonprofit SDP program called Grassroots Soccer in Africa, which uses soccer as a platform to help empower youth to protect themselves against HIV, AIDS, and just other health promotion issues. When I heard about this as a kid I was like, “That is so cool. Look at this guy using his passion for soccer to help others around the world.” That was really my introduction to SDP. His name is Ethan Zahn. Then over time, as I got older, I traveled the world a lot. My experience with soccer helped me connect and build relationships with so many people across different cultures and backgrounds. Even if we couldn’t speak the same language or looked completely different, you pull out a soccer ball and it just immediately brings people together. I think there are parts of the human experience, whether it’s play, sport, music, or food, that transcend cultures that, if they’re positioned correctly, can bring people together. It connects us to the shared humanity, rather than focusing on the differences and the things that build walls between us or differentiate us.

Tammy: That’s super interesting. Can you describe a little bit about the Deporte y Cambio Social, so the Sport for Social Change SDP program and the study that you conducted with the American and Mexican stakeholders?

Adam: Yes. This was a program we did in summer 2019. It was a partnership between WVU and the University of Monterrey, Mexico. The program was funded by the U.S. State Department through the University of Montana. The program experience was fantastic. Basically, the core purposes of the program were to use soccer to promote women’s empowerment and leadership development with sport coaches who were going to work with girls and women in the future.

One of the things that just played out, both through the design and the implementation of the program, were some of the inherent shortcomings or obstacles that can happen in the SDP experience since there are so many people involved and these programs are often short- term. We went to Monterrey for seven days. They then came here a month later, for 13 days. Every day was pretty jam packed with activities and agendas. Although, these programs really help build relationships – I’m still in contact with a lot of the Mexican stakeholders that I met through that experience, many of the shortcomings of the SDP experience seeped out in both contexts.

What I wanted to explore with my dissertation, was participants’ understandings or reflections on what they made of the program two years later. I will talk about my thesis in a bit, but a lot of SDP programs will do a “pre-post follow-up” and that’s it. There’s no longer term follow-up of how sustainable some of these initiatives or concepts can be.

Tammy: What would you say were the biggest disconnects between the stakeholders and the researchers, but also practitioners who want to engage in the actual work. Because I know that sometimes it’s a little different being a researcher versus a practitioner.

Adam: For sure. That’s not just unique to this field. There’s a lot of research fields where that’s the case, but that is really prevalent in the SDP field, in particular. One of the core pieces of this is the disconnect between funders as well as researchers and practitioners. I mentioned that the U.S. State Department funded this program, which not only came with its own set of expectations and demands from the State Department, it also reinforced this imbalanced power dynamic where the American contingent was responsible for developing the program, setting the itinerary, and the Mexican contingent was more responsible for reserving field space and recruiting participants.

It really created this imbalanced power dynamic where the Americans were considered the experts, and the Mexicans were more the recipients of that expertise. This was supposed to be a shared partnership. More recent SDP scholarship has really explored this with neoliberal tendencies, looking at the role that power and culture can play, especially between the global north and global south within these programs. Those tendencies are something that, throughout my life and my experience, I unfortunately have played into. I’ve really, particularly at a younger age, thought, “Wow, how cool that I can go to Africa and use soccer to teach them about how they can protect themselves against HIV.”

What if the recipients don’t want that? What about them? What about their wants and needs? What if they don’t like soccer? There’s a concept called “voluntourism.” I’m going over there to do this great thing, to help people. I leave. I feel good about myself. What about them? What happens with that information? What happens with that program? I think a lot of researchers are engaging with more qualitative, critical methodologies and really prioritizing indigenous local voices to counteract some of those inherent neoliberal power imbalances that can arise.

This whole idea of us going there and telling them what they should do and then leaving, it just doesn’t sit super well with me. Again, that’s something that I admittedly played into through some of my earlier experiences. There are a lot of forces at play. I think it all stems from sport being a microcosm of society and humanity.

One of the things with Deportey Cambio Social that was really neat was participants reflecting on the shared humanity between Mexican and American stakeholders, whether that was shared suffering, telling stories, sharing music, learning about each other’s culture. That is the power of not just sport, but these shared activities, these shared things that can bring people together to build relationships.

Tammy: Yes. Thank you for that. I know you also conducted a scoping review of a very specific program, which was Health Promotion Interventions with Youth in Africa, and you already talked a little bit about Africa. Can you provide a brief summary of the results and the important findings from that?

Adam: That study was my first jump into the SDP pool of research. In hindsight, some of those findings contributed to some of the things I was just talking about, and specific to an African context and using SDP programs for health promotion. A lot of these forces are very much at play there. Some of the studies I found and looked into as part of that study were funded by FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) or funded by global north governments who have their own agendas and want to look good or they were connected to the World Cup. A lot of these studies had significant positive results.

They would use Likert-type items to measure pre-post and find that the participants knew more about how to protect themselves against HIV after the program than before the program. SDP works. It’s like, “okay, well, duh,” like if you did an immersive workshop with anyone about anything, they’re probably going to know more right after than right before. It is as if those results fluffed up this idea of sport as a potential “end-all, be-all” that can solve all the world’s problems. It has a potential to be, but it depends how it’s positioned. The findings from my scope and review were overwhelmingly positive in relation to how effective these programs can be.

In retrospect, a lot was artificially constructed in ways because they would do a pre-post measurement. Some studies did a one- or three-month follow-up. Almost no studies did longer-term follow-ups.. After the follow ups, we don’t know what happens with the information. We don’t know what happens with those participants. It’s hard to really sit with and understand, if we’re only looking at this little window of time, how much are we missing out to the story?

Tammy: Yes, definitely. Through both your personal experiences and your research, you’ve gathered a lot of knowledge about SDP programs and critiqued them a lot, which is good. We can’t just take them and think, “These are great, let’s just implement it.” What advice would you give to practitioners who wish to engage in these types of programs but aren’t really sure how to get started?

Adam: I love that question. This is something I wish I had more clarity on earlier in my career. Currently, there’s a lot of immersive, critical, qualitative research related to SDP that is certainly a good starting point. Just to read some of the more recent articles I know, Lindsay Hayhurst has done a lot, Rich Giulianotti, Simon Darnell, Meredith Whitley. There’s a lot of well-known researchers within the field who have done this type of work. That would be a good starting point.

I’ve been impressed with how open and receptive some big names are to talking with either fellow scholars or people who are interested in the field. Reach out to names who are doing the work, and worst-case scenario, they can’t meet or they don’t respond. It’s always worth taking that shot. The third piece of advice would be to always nurture that curiosity and line of questioning or challenge what we see. Try to poke holes in what that first appearance is.

Have the courage to constantly question and constantly try to improve, even if something looks good on the surface.

Tammy: Adam, thank you so much for sharing your experience on SDP programs.

Adam: Thank you for reaching out, Tammy. And if other people want to reach out to me, I love having these types of conversations. My email address is adamhansell33@gmail.com.