Guest editors: Eva Soares Moura (FSV UK), Simona Šafaříková (PřF UPOL), Arnošt Svoboda (FTK UPOL)
Submission of abstracts: 31st March 2026
Submission of full manuscripts: 31st October 2026
Since the early 2000s, sport has been promoted as a tool for international development and a means of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The institutionalisation of the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector has led to the global expansion of sport in addressing gender and social inequalities, climate change, and other societal challenges (Giulianotti et al., 2019). However, it has also triggered critical debates about the limitations of sport in fostering social change and peace.
Despite an increasing amount of research on SDP, the field is still dominated by Anglo- American and Western European viewpoints. Critical scholars have emphasised how Northern paradigms define 'best practices', impose standardised metrics and marginalise local knowledge (Ponciano Núñez, 2025; Quijano, 2019). While these critiques typically target contexts in the Global South, we argue that similar epistemic hierarchies also shape the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. The CEE region has historically been positioned as Europe’s 'periphery' and has been subject to both Westernisation and post-socialist transitions (Berend, 2005). Persistent East–West disparities in governance, development and political alignment remain salient (Volintiru et al., 2024) and crises such as the war in Ukraine exacerbate these challenges. Situated outside the conventional North–South binary and characterised by 'inbetweenness' (Drieschova, 2024), CEE offers a unique viewpoint from which to reconsider how knowledge and practice are produced and valued in SDP.
This thematic issue explores how sport is imagined, utilised and contested as a catalyst for social change in Central and Eastern Europe. Using the lens of social imaginaries — collectively shared frameworks that guide practices and shape expectations of the future (Taylor, 2004; Castoriadis, 1987) — this issue will examine how various stakeholders and actors in Central and Eastern Europe envision and enact the transformative potential of sport. In line with calls for the reflexive co-construction of knowledge (Bilgen et al., 2021), we aim to prioritise the perspectives and knowledge systems of individuals in CEE, thereby contributing to a more situated understanding of sport and SDP. We consider sport in CEE to be a contested practice, intertwined with the histories of socialism, post-socialist transformation and geopolitical conflict. Furthermore, given that development and peace are intertwined, Central and Eastern Europe provides a particularly timely context in which to examine how sport can contribute to social change and peace-building.
To analyze and exemplify the topics mentioned above, we welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Send an abstract (200–300 words), summarizing the research aims, methodology, theoretical framework and main arguments and/or findings to casopis@soc.cas.cz, eva.smoura@fsv.cuni.cz, simona.safarikova@upol.cz and arnost.svoboda@upol.cz.
Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit manuscripts, which will undergo a standard anonymous peer review process. A final decision on the acceptance will be based on the outcome of the peer review process.
Czech Sociological Review’s guidelines for authors: https://sreview.soc.cas.cz/artkey/inf-990000-1600_Author-Guidelines.php?l=EN
In case of any additional questions or information, please contact the guest editors:
eva.smoura@fsv.cuni.cz
simona.safarikova@upol.cz
arnost.svoboda@upol.cz