Faculty and Guest Presentations

Our faculty are at the forefront of creating knowledge in adventure, culinary arts, tourism and related fields. Here we offer some of the presentations they have made, as well as presentations made by visitors to our faculty. FACT welcomes colleagues from around the world to visit us and present their work to faculty and students across TRU.

The Age of Fitness: The Body as Success

Juergen Martschukat (University of Erfurt)
Sept. 24, 2024

The talk discusses the obsession with fitness and the healthy body in contemporary Western societies. Focusing on the most recent age of fitness beginning in the 1970s and lasting until today, it explores how the concept of fitness and the practices of working out and eating ‘right’ have gained shape in recent decades. The talk argues that working on one’s fitness, from counting calories to going to the gym, embodies a self-perception as autonomous human beings, who invest in themselves and take responsibility for their life.

Juergen Martschukat is a historian and professor of North American History at the University of Erfurt in Germany. A fitness aficionado himself, he has worked and published widely on the body and its history. Among his most recent publications is The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement (Polity 2021).

Football Foodstuffs: What pies tell us about the beautiful game

Dr. Mike Cronin
March 15, 2022

Dr. Mike Cronin explores the significance of the pie in British history and why it is the pie, above all else, that is eaten at football grounds around the country. Mike Cronin is a Professor in Irish Studies and the Director of Boston College in Ireland. He has worked extensively in twentieth century Irish history and in particular on the relationship between sport and identity. He is the author of Sport and Nationalism: Gaelic Games, Soccer and Irish National Identity (1999), with Daryl Adair, Wearing the Green: A History of St Patrick's Day (2002), with Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The GAA: A People's History (2009), Sport: A Very Short Introduction (2014), and with Kevin Marston, The Football Hoax: Boston’s Social Elites, Myth Making and the Origins of the Game (2022).