At Wednesday’s final keynote session at the EASM 2012 conference Jens Sejer Andersen, international director of Play the Game pointed to seven areas of interest for academic research in the future.

New research project funded by the European Commission seeks to investigate football’s impact on identity dynamics and cultural change in Europe.

Last Sunday Ali Karimi - aka Asia's Maradona – was fired from the Tehran team Steel Azin FC for not fasting during Ramadan. Karimi is no ‘nobody’ in Iran. He is the second most merited on the national team, third on the top scorer list and was voted Asia's best player in Iran in 2004.

The Examination of Threats to the Integrity of Sports was commissioned by the EU Sports Platform and has been launched in European Parliament. The report, elaborated by Danish research institute Oxford Research, outlines the key problems and also examines what can be done to combat the threats.

When the torch passes through Canada's aboriginal communities it won't shed any light on the poverty that keeps their children from the Olympic dream

Mega-events as drivers of social change: Experts on China went head-to-head in trying to assess the legacy and impact of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Football can, it seems, revive national rivalries and conjure the ghosts of past wars. But football, can also, in a different way than long speeches or international resolutions, help induce progress toward peaceful solutions for military conflicts.