The International Football History Conference 2025 was held at Windsor Park Belfast last week and, as usual, we had a panel of judges picking out their best paper awards and an inclusivity award. Competition was fierce and the winners, once again, thoroughly deserved their recognition. The award winners were:
Day One (Friday 13 June 2025) Best Paper: The judges asked if they could make two awards at the end of this day and they selected Tim Mills for his presentation ‘Football & Museums – A model for community led programming’ and Kasey Symons for her presentation on ‘Investigating women’s Australian rules football romance fiction and the history of fandom it tells from the first decade of the AFLW’ (co-authored research with Lee McGowan). Kasey has been a regular attendee at the conference since it was established in 2017 and she has always presented high quality research in an engaging way.
Day Two (Saturday 14 June 2025) Best Paper: Gabriela Ríos-Infante won the award for her presentation on ‘The Philosophy of Women’s Football in Mexico: Interactions Through an Ethnographic Lens in El Volcán’. As well as this being a great research topic and presentation, it was particularly impressive that Gabriela was presenting in English for the first time.
The Inclusivity Award was judged over both days and this went to:
Karen Fraser, Fiona Skillen & Julie McNeill for their panel on ‘A most unsuitable game: Reflections on a community celebration of the women’s game in Scotland.’ Back in 2023 Karen, Fiona and Julie presented about this project at our Hampden Park conference and it was gratifying to see them return with reflections on what was clearly a well-managed, researched and impact-making project.
Congratulations to all winners. These awards are supported by Routledge books and they provided books and vouchers to each winner.
Previous winners of these awards are:
Gary James' Football Archive 