This year’s European College of Sports Science (ECSS) Congress was held in a not so sunny Glasgow – all the waterproofs were needed for this conference, but it certainly didn’t dampen the experience! The conference theme was enhancing health, performance and community sport and was filled with a huge variety of talks and posters across the sports science disciplines. A favourite talk of mine was Prof. dr. Vincent Gouttebarge’s talk “Elite athletes are humans first: their mental health challenges” and resonated greatly in relation to our work here at the SPRINT Project.
ECSS is one of my favourite conferences to attend regularly and I really wanted to be able to capture why in the blog this year. To do so I’ve split the blog into two halves so that I can tell you about the work I presented from our safeguarding and abuse prevention in dance project with community partners One Dance UK and then why heading to broader sports science conferences like ECSS is such a great opportunity for personal and professional development.
Dance your heart out: Learnings from an investigation into safeguarding and abuse prevention in UK Dance settings.
When congruence is lacking between safeguarding and abuse prevention policy and its application into psychologically safe performance environments individuals face exposure to harmful risks that can negatively impact both their physical health and their mental health and well-being. This research explored safeguarding and abuse prevention in UK dance environments from organisational and dancer perspectives and found a variety of similarities from organisational and dancer perspectives relating to best practice (e.g., supportive peer relationships, and supportive dance educators) and areas for improvement (e.g., better understanding of, and how to support mental health, and needed cultural change).
There is a drive within the dance sector for the enhancement of safeguarding and abuse prevention policy that is meaningful and relevant to the UK Dance context across professional, pre-vocational and participatory levels. Psychological safety is key to ensuring that even the best policies can be implemented within peer-peer interactions and peer-educator interactions.
Image description: Dr Grace Tidmarsh at ECSS Glasgow giving her presentation.
5 ways ECSS is great for personal and professional development.
The broad range of sports science on offer means you can engage in topics beyond your own specialty, whether they are of personal interest (for example, I enjoyed attending some talks on the menstrual cycle and sport) or would be useful fields to incorporate greater interdisciplinary approaches to your own work.
It’s a really friendly conference with academics and applied practitioners from across the world, as such it is a great opportunity for networking, explaining your research in understandable terms to those outside your area as well as engaging in interesting conversations over some delicious lunches. I had a very interesting chat about the sugar tax over lunch one day! It’s also great for spending time with current colleagues and building a stronger sense of community within your own departments and research groups.
The range of scientific disciplines also offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in different presentation styles and academic posters. It's such a good opportunity to take away some ideas you might want to include in the way you design and deliver your own presentations or posters.
Hosted in some of the most amazing cities across Europe, ECSS means you can also enjoy some personal development engaging in diverse cultures, types of history and various new cuisines. If you are travelling from the UK, you’re even likely to get to enjoy some sunshine and Vitamin D, especially as ECSS 2025 heads to Rimini in Italy!
Finally, my favourite thing about ECSS is its passion and support for post-graduate and early career researchers. The Young Investigator Award (YIA; oral and poster presentations, and the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) Sports Nutrition Award, and the opportunity for associated travel grants is of particular note. You can find some top tips on attending ECSS and entering the YIA competition based on my previous experience in the ECSS Prague 2019 blog post. A number of post-graduate researchers and early career researchers attended this years Glasgow conference and it was great to learn more about there research too, and have the breadth of research taking place at the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences showcased. See below for more information.
Cameron Ley presented research from his PhD via an oral presentation titled: “Assessing the validity of the MyotonPRO as a method of measuring stiffness of human rectus femoris muscle”.
Image description: Cameron Ley at ECSS Glasgow giving his presentation.
Jack Feron presented research from his PhD via an oral presentation titled: “Cerebral blood flow and arterial transit time responses to home-based exercise training in healthy older adults”.
Image description: Jack Feron at ECSS Glasgow giving his presentation.
Dr Kelsey Joyce presented work from her current Postdoctoral research via a poster titled: “Prediction of acute mountain sickness using overnight pulse oximetry during ascent to 4,554 m”.
Image description: A photo of Dr Kelsey Joyce's poster which she presented at ECSS in Glasgow.
Alban Dickson also presented his research via an oral presentation titled: "Agreeing the optimal methods for promoting psychosocial development in young footballers with hybrid learning pedagogy".
A huge thank you as always to everyone at ECSS for putting on such a brilliant conference and to the delegates for creating such a welcoming and inquisitive science community. It was great to see familiar faces and meet new ones, and I thoroughly look forward to ECSS 2025.
Image credit: Dr Grace Tidmarsh, Cameron Ley & Alban Dickson.
Written by Dr Grace Tidmarsh, ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the SPRINT Project.
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