University of Limerick Awarded the TAFISA Mission 2030 Academia Award – Nathan Bolger.

At the 28^th TAFISA World Congress held in Dusseldorf in early November, for their work on the INTERACT+ project, the University of Limerick and specifically the PESS Department and the PAfH Research Centre were awarded the Mission 2030 Academia award by TAFISA (The Association For International Sport For All).

Over 350 participants from more than 70 countries attended the World Congress, each of them respected leaders of various national and international sports organisations. Throughout the week, there were a multitude of interesting talks given, such as on the role of sport in helping with climate change, on engaging the media to cover non-elite sports events, on getting more women into sport and also on the learnings so far on the INTERACT+ project.

The INTERACT+ Project (International and European Sport Organisations Activating Citizens Plus), is a project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The UL research team on INTERACT+ are Prof. Catherine Woods, Prof. Aurelie van Hoye and Mr. Nathan Bolger.  INTERACT+ aims to enhance the tools and resources built by its predecessor project, INTERACT, to complement ISO (International Sport Organisations) activities and support them in developing Sport for All.  The INTERACT+ project brings together a number of partners including TAFISA (The Association For International Sport For All), IDO (International Dance Organization), European Flying Disc Federation, World Minigolf Federation, FISU (International University Sports Federation) and more.  UL researchers have been leading on systematic literature reviews, infographics concerning the barriers and facilitators to sport participation, and on the development of a theory of action logic model.

 It was a great honour to be able to attend the World Congress and accept this prestigious award on behalf of UL.  This is a great acknowledgement of the work the UL team have completed so far. It can be difficult to bridge the gap between research and the applied world, but when it is done correctly the benefits are wide reaching.