Gijsbert Oonk
Gijsbert Oonk
Affiliate Faculty
Sport, Migration, Citizenship and Representation; Inclusion and Exclusion; Race.
Gijsbert is the founding director of the Sport and Nation programm at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This interdisciplinary research programm focusses talented athletes with migrant background in Football (soccer) and the Olympic Games. The overall research questions weaves around debates and controversies related to the question: Who may represent the nation? He is currently working on a history of the Olympic Games through the lens of gender- gender equality; race and racism and universialism and nationalism between 1896-2024.
Current Research
Book project: Breaking Boundaries: Gender, Race, and Nationality in the Olympic Games, 1896–2024
In Breaking Boundaries, my forthcoming book, I examine the persistent struggles faced by women, people of color, laborers, and athletes from the Global South in their quest to participate and represent themselves in the Olympic Games.
Pierre de Coubertin, the self-proclaimed architect of modern Olympism, asserted that the Games were “completely egalitarian in origin since membership is determined solely by the physical superiority of the individual.” (Coubertin, Olympism 580) Yet, his vision, and that of most members of the International Olympic Committee was starkly exclusionary: “the true Olympic Hero is, in my view, the individual adult male. (…) competitors in manly sports par excellence.” (Coubertin, Olympism 582). By 'amateur,' Coubertin largely meant aristocratic or noble men, those privileged enough to engage in elite sports purely for passion rather than livelihood.
This book delves into the contradictions inherent in Coubertin’s ideal through the prisms of gender equality, racial justice, and the tension between nationalism and universalism. It highlights the stories of individuals and institutions that defied and redefined 19th-century notions of "equality" and paved the way for a more inclusive Olympic movement.
Selected Publications
2023 Oonk, G., & Oonk, A. (2023). ‘This Is Not a Problem but an Issue’: Chinese-Born Table Tennis Players Representing Another Country at the Olympics, 1988–2020. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 40(4), 350–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2023.2186857
2022 Who Represents the Country? A Short History of Foreign-Born Athletes in the World Cup. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-athletes-world-cup-nationality
- Nationality Swapping in the Olympic Field. Cases and Contexts from the Middle East 1998-2016. Routledge Handbook on Sport in the Middle East, Routledge 2022. (Together with Jorn Schulte), 344-354.
Who may represent the country: Football, Citizenship Migration and Identity at the FIFA world cup. The International Journal of the History of Sport (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1844188
Grants and Fellowships
2024 Hidden Competitions. NWO -SGW grant (L) . 800.000 for two post-docs and a PHD student, We managed to get to the final round; received 9th place where 8 proposals were awarded.
2022 Robert Schuman Fellowship for 3 months, for the period 10 October 2022 – 14 January 2023 at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at European Institute in Florence/Italy.
“Football Makes History: Schools and Football Club Museums Unlocking Local Heritage education”. Projectnummer: 2021-2-NL01-KA220-SCH-000049248 PI 400.000=
2020 Community Learning and Innovation Fellow at the Erasmus University: 0,2 fte for one year. May 2020- April 2021: Utopia for Beginners: Teaching Global Challenges through Local Cases.
2019 Successful supervising Post-Doc application Dr. Christian Ungruhe: “Mobile Life Worlds: Trajectories of West African football migrants en route and in South-East Asia” : 92.500,-.
A two year fellowship position in the LEaDing Fellows Postdoc Programme. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 707404. Success-rate 9,11 %
2018 Jean Monnet (ad Personam) Chair on Migration, Citizenship and Identity. Awarded in August 2018. It was established by the European Commission as an initiative to promote teaching, research and reflection in the field of European integration studies in higher education institutions. This chair promotes teaching and research in the field of Global History, European Studies and National Identity: 50.000,-. Success-rate 11.4%
Courses Taught
Global History
Sport and National Identity
Migration, Citizenship and Identity in Globalizing World
In the Media
2024 Blog for Football Makes History: We played for 95.000 people but came home to a ban. Reclaiming Herstory: The Untold Triumphs of Past Women Footballers Unearthed Despite FIFA’s Neglect. https://footballmakeshistory.eu/we-played-for-95-000-people-but-came-home-to-a-ban/
US women’s World Cup domination has ended. But the nation remains a global talent factory, Interview by By Jessie Yeung, CNN : Published 9:55 PM EDT, Mon August 7, 2023
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/07/football/us-womens-soccer-world-cup-nationality-intl-hnk-spt-dst
The Influence and Gap in Performance of US-Born Soccer Players, The1014, by David Faiumu
https://the1014.co.nz/uncategorized/live-updates-colombia-vs-jamaica-and-france-vs-morocco-womens-world-cup/27276/ Tuesday 8 august, 2023.
Vox.com https://www.vox.com/c/world/2022/12/8/23471181/how-migration-has-shaped-the-world-cup (8/12 2022)