WADA’s 20 year anniversary as 2019 INDR conference theme

Editorial by Ask Vest Christiansen and John Gleaves

It has been a while since our last update. While we do not want to tire you with tedious excuses on the long INDR-silence, we can reveal, that one thing that has been on our agenda, is preparing the 2019 INDR conference in Aarhus, Denmark. So, we now have a strong theme and a number of confirmed keynotes ready, that we are confident will excite many INDR members and previous conference delegates.

As it is well known to INDR members, 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the Lausanne meeting that eventually led to the establishment of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) as a collaboration between the IOC and governments around the world.

Also in 2019, professors Barrie Houlihan, Ivan Waddington, Sigmund Loland and Dag Vidar Hanstad, are guest editors of a special issue of the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics aimed at providing a forum for critical analysis of the WADA. Hence, in association with Houlihan, Waddington, Loland and Hanstad, the INDR wants to mark the anniversary with a conference that focuses on the achievements, dilemmas and challenges WADA’s has faced in the first two decades of the 21st century and will be facing in the decades to come.

Conference dates: 22-23 August 2019

Venue: Aarhus University, Denmark

The conference will focus on topics and issues such as the prevalence of doping in sport, athletes’ rights, the potential of threshold-limits in testing, doctors’ involvement in sport, the introduction of intelligence and large-scale interventions in anti-doping and new aspects of doping research.

Confirmed keynote speakers are:

• Professor Barrie Houlihan, Loughborough University (on anti-doping policy, compliance and the WADC).
• Professor Sue Backhouse, Leeds Beckett University (on the challenges and possibilities in researching doping and anti-doping)
• Professor, John Hoberman, University of Texas at Austin (on the WADA-Russia-IOC political struggle)
• Olivier de Hon, Manager Scientific Affairs at the Anti-Doping Authority of the Netherlands (on the delicate balance between AAF and cheating athletes)
• Associate Professor John Gleaves, California State University, Fullerton (on being an expert witness in the court case the United States vs. Lance Armstrong).

We hope that you will reserve the dates in your diaries and perhaps begin thinking about preparing an abstract for the conference. The official call for abstracts will be out shortly when we have the submission page up and running.

Also in this newsletter, we have two interesting commentaries. One is by Erik Duiven, Olivier de Hon & Laila Spruijt, from Anti-Doping Authority Netherlands and deals with the difficulties of Dietary supplement contamination. The other, by Kelsey Erickson, Leeds Beckett University, UK, addresses the issue of doping and whistle blowing.

Finally, we are happy to to forward the information that our colleague and INDR member, Jules Woolf, is in a new position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That means he is now in a position to consider taking on doctoral students. They have an upcoming recruitment day and provide funding for students to attend. Please contact Jules (jwoolf@illinois.edu) for more information.