Running (to/from) Work

The Moving Bodies Lab in the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities invites you to an online webinar presented by Professor Alex Mold (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) and Dr Simon Cook (Birmingham City University) exploring one of the most popular sports and pastimes in the UK - Running.

Running and fun in the 1970s and 1980s
Professor Alex Mold

During the 1970s and 1980s, a growing number of people took up running. By 1978, it was estimated that there were at least one million runners in Britain. Many of these new participants were inspired by books and guides to running that proclaimed the sport to be ‘fun’. In this paper I will take a closer look at a selection of these books to demonstrate that beneath the fun exterior, a set of more serious concerns were at work. Running was put forward as a way to get fit and improve health, but also as a solution to deeper individual and collective malaise. This chimed with, and worked against, broader changes in society in this period.

Run-commuting: back to the future?
Dr Simon Cook

This talk will explore the recent rise of run-commuting – the act of running to/from work – and consider what it means for the role of running in people’s lives and in society more widely. Focussing on why people run-commute and what it feels like to do so, highlights how the functions, meanings and experiences of running differ when used for transport. This not only reflects the contemporary condition of running practices but offers threads to both the history of running and its possible futures.

About the speakers

Alex Mold is Professor of Public Health History at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on the history of public health in Britain since 1945. Alex has worked on the history of patient consumerism, voluntary organisations and health and the history of health education. She is currently a Co-Investigator on a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award project entitled ‘Kicking the habit’, which examines the history of ‘addictive’ sports sponsorship in Britain since 1965.

Dr Simon Cook is a human geographer at Birmingham City University. His research concerns everyday active practices: the ways in which they happen, how they change, and what they can tell us about societies and spaces. He is currently researching long-distance walking, post-collision cycling, and run-commuting practices as well of thinking about the possibilities for sport mobilities and active travel beyond walking and cycling. He tweets @SimonIanCook and blogs at https://jographies.wordpress.com/.

Zoom link will be circulated closer to the event.

This event is free to attend.