Keynotes

David Tod
Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University

David has been offering psychological services to athletes and coaches since 1994 and has worked in various sports including rugby union, rugby league, cricket, football, netball, and athletics. He has worked in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. He has assisted athletes across all levels of sport from weekend warriors to Olympians. He completed his PhD at Victoria University where he examined the professional development and training of applied sport psychologists, primarily based around a longitudinal study now into its 10th year. Since completing his PhD, David has continued to research and publish in the area of professional development and applied sport psychology service delivery, has been invited to contribute chapters to international textbooks, and has presented at international conferences.  David is a member of the British Association for Sport and Exercise Science and the British Psychological Society.

 

Dave Collins
University of Central Lancashire/ Grey Matters Performance Ltd.

Professor of Coaching and Performance at the University of Central Lancashire and Director of Grey Matters Performance Consultants.  Previously, as Performance Director of UK Athletics, Dave directed the programme which progressed the team from 24th to 6th (World to Olympic) 21st to 3rd (World Indoors) and 12th to 1st (European Team). In addition to this spell in ‘management’, he has attended 8 Olympics, 26 World Championships and over 50 Europeans as an applied psychologist..  Since commencing formal applied work in 1985, Dave has worked with over 60 World or Olympic medallists plus professional sports teams and performers, dancers, musicians, and executives in business and public service. As an academic, Dave has over 150 peer review publications and 35 books/book chapters published. Current research interests include performer and coach development, cognitive expertise, and the promotion of peak performance across different challenge environments. As a performer, Dave was excessively average at low skill sports such as Rugby, American Football, Martial Arts and Outdoor Pursuits.  He has coached rugby to national level, is a senior coach in weightlifting and a qualified and experienced PE teacher/teacher educator. In coach education, Dave has developed/is developing coaching schemes for seven different governing bodies. He has consulted with coaching organisations worldwide, including the UK, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, India, Fiji and Singapore. Dave is a Fellow of the Society of Martial Arts, the Zoological Society of London and the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a former Officer in the Royal Marines.

 

Veerle De Bosscher
Department of Sports Policy and Management, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Veerle De Bosscher is professor at the department of Sports Policy and Management (faculty of Physical Education) in the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium.  She graduated in 1994 in Physical Education and earned a Masters degree (GGS) in sports management in Brussels  (VUB, 1995) and also in training and coaching in Leuven (KUL, 1995). Since 2012 she is also visiting professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Veerle obtained her doctorate on the topic “Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success (SPLISS)” in 2007, on which she won a Best Paper Award during the SMAANZ conference. Her research interests are in different areas of sport management related to sport- and elite sport policy and systems, international comparisons, measuring competitiveness, youth and sport development, benchmarking, strategic and performance management in sport. She has published her work in diverse refereed journals (such as the European Sport Management Quarterly, the Journal of Sport Management, the Sport Management Review and the International journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship), book chapters and she edited several Dutch and English books (e.g. the Global Sporting Arms Race, (Meyer & Meyer Sport); Vlaanderen Sport (Arko Sports Media); managing high performance sport (Routledge)). Veerle was invited as a keynote speaker at a variety of national and international conferences and contributed to the elite sport development in Flanders as a counselor over the past years. In 2009 she was an invited researcher at Bond University (Australia, Queensland). She is coordinating an international network on research cooperation in high performance sport, called SPLISS where she cooperates with more than 15 nations; she plays a leading role in international comparative research. Veerle is a member of the board of the European Association of Sport Management (EASM), vice chair of the scientific committee and also member of the steering committee of elite sport in Flanders.