There appears to be a gap in the literature when it comes to examining the role that grief and loss might play while athletes undergo the reconstruction of their identity post-sport. Navigating Athletic Identity, Retirement Transitions, and Self-Discovery: Exiting the Arena investigates the long and often studied concept of identity in athletes from the perspective of transitioning identity as a potential form of loss. Ultimately, we posit that identity transition should also be understood as a form of identity loss, and research conceptualizing the grieving process that athletes experience in that transition should be studied more deeply.

Athlete Transitions into Retirement provides contemporary viewpoints on athlete transitions from elite sport in a global context. This volume is a collaboration of research from leading authors around the world, offering global perspectives to athlete transitions into retirement.

Beginning in 1989, more than 8,000 men disappeared in Kashmir. These disappearances were publicly denied, leaving mourners to grapple with unrecognized grief. Drawn from ten years of psycho-historical research in Kashmir, Shifa Haq reflects on the bereaved families’ intricate experiences of mourning. Haq expands the psychoanalytic understanding of loss and argues for a mourning that includes porous affective links with the political.

Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport explores whether high-performance athletes have healthy and prosperous relationships with exercise and well-being after retirement from elite sports. This edited collection is the first of its kind to bring together sociologically informed accounts from former high-performance athletes about their retirement experiences and post-sporting careers. The chapters combine creative narrative writing and social theory to frame the experiences of exercise and well-being after retirement from high-performance sport. Written by former high-performance athletes who are now socio-cultural sports scholars, the authors explore how retiring from elite sport impacted their relationship to exercise and physical activity, identity, and long-term mental health. This book is key reading for graduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics and researchers interested in sports retirement experiences, sport sociology, mental health, and well-being.

This book was written for sport psychologists and other practitioners who are concerned with the well-being of athletes who are facing the difficult transition from a sports career and the regret anxiety and identity loss that can accompany retirement. This is a groundbreaking collaboration by international scholars providing an overview of empirical theoretical and applied perspectives on sports career transitions.

This book takes a close look at how the sport industry has been impacted by the global Coronavirus pandemic, as entire seasons have been cut short, events have been cancelled, athletes have been infected, and sport studies programs have moved online. Crucially, the book also asks how the industry might move forward. With contributions from sport studies researchers across the world, the book offers commentaries, cases, and informed analysis across a wide range of topics and practical areas within sport business and management, from crisis communication and marketing to event management and finance. While Covid-19 will inevitably cast a long shadow over sport for years to come, and although the situation is fast-evolving and the future is uncertain, this book offers some important early perspectives and reflections that will inform debate and influence policy and practice. A timely addition to the body of knowledge regarding the pandemic, this is an important resource for researchers, students, practitioners, the media, policy-makers, and anybody who cares about the future of sport.