Workshop: Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Bernard Suits’ Legacy

Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Bernard Suits’ Legacy

Filip Kobiela, Francisco Javier López Frías, Signe Højbjerre Larsen, and Taliah Powers

A workshop of the 2025 IAPS conference, August 27, 2025

Hosted by the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, and sponsored by the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport (IAPS)

In 1978, Bernard Suits published The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, a fundamental work offering a powerful conceptual framework for understanding the nature of sport and its relation to human life and society. Suits' works have since heavily influenced discussions not only within the philosophy of sport, but also across diverse fields such as sport ethics, sport sociology, and sport anthropology.

As we mark the 100th anniversary of Bernard Suits’ birth (November 25, 1925), it is timely to reflect on how his groundbreaking views on games and sport have influenced contemporary thought on games, sport, and the good life. This workshop aims to gather scholars from various disciplines—philosophy, sociology, ethics, history, and beyond—to evaluate and explore the enduring impact of Suits’ oeuvre.

The University of Southern Denmark, in collaboration with IAPS, invites scholars to this workshop on August 27, 2025, at the University of Southern Denmark. The workshop will take place during the 2025 IAPS conference, scheduled for August 26 – 30, 2025. Accommodations will be available at the IAPS conference hotel, and thanks to IAPS’ generous support, registration fees for the Suits workshop will be waived. For more details on accommodation and transport, visit https://event.sdu.dk/iaps2025/conference.

Abstract submissions for the workshop are due by May 20, 2025. Please send them to Taliah Powers at [email protected]. If accepted, authors will have three months, until August 13, to submit the full version of their presentation (3,000-3,500 words, footnotes and references included). All papers will be circulated in advance to facilitate discussion. Contributions to the workshop will be considered for inclusion in a special issue titled “Centennial Reflections on the Grasshopper of Sport Philosophy,” which will be published in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

The workshop is set to be an in-person event.