Articles from:March 2022

• Athletes are collateral damage in Russia’s war with Ukraine, say Brock experts

  Wednesday, March 02, 2022 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 2 March 2022 – R0025

  So long as its military remains in Ukraine, much of the international sport community will not welcome Russian participation, say two Brock University experts.

  Through actions including a complete ban on Russian soccer clubs and national teams from all FIFA and UEFA competitions, the cancellation of events set to be hosted in Russia and the removal of Russian sponsors from many sports organizations, Assistant Professors of Sport Management Taylor McKee and Michael Naraine believe significant additional pressure will be placed on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the hostilities.

  “When it comes to the game of global affairs chess, sport serves as a pawn, but pawns are relevant to the endgame,” says Naraine. “Pawns are tactical pieces that can be sacrificed or used to amplify pressure, and tend to get a lot of media attention.”

  McKee believes that negative media attention can be harnessed for change internally.

  “The effects of isolating Russian athletes and entertainers from international competition will be felt by all Russians and will certainly impact Putin’s domestic popularity,” he says. “The key for the global sport community is solidarity, denying Russia the ability to showcase their athletes as conduits of state propaganda. This tactic has the ability to create even more friction among a Russian public that is, at best, somewhat ambivalent about the invasion of Ukraine.”

  Naraine believes the sanctions will be toughest on Russian athletes themselves.

  “This is a difficult time for Russian athletes who do not necessarily have a say in what their government does abroad, so they end up being collateral damage,” he says.

  McKee says there is also historical context for what bans of this scale can achieve.

  “Sporting isolation is the only conceivable course of action that would place any degree of pressure on Russia,” he says. “This could entail a complete boycott, similar to the boycott of apartheid South Africa, which would extend to any nation competing with Russia in any sport.”

  With such colossal impacts on Russia’s economic development and tourism sectors, Naraine believes Putin may have been biding his time before starting a war.

  “He was calculated enough to host a FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games in Russia before instigating this invasion,” he says.

  But cracks are also beginning to form in the areas of interpretation and enforcement, with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) ruling that Russian athletes will be able to compete as neutrals under the Paralympic flag at the Beijing Paralympics that begin Friday, March 4.

  Naraine says sporting bodies like the IPC are making difficult decisions within complex legal frameworks.

  “While the optics look bad to most people, there are legal and economic implications also at play,” he says. “The IPC did all they could without being sanctioned themselves for preventing athletes from competing.”

  However, given the nature of the current political situation, McKee believes that exceptional steps are necessary.

  “Allowing Russian athletes to compete, under any flag, undermines the desired sporting isolation that the international sporting community is attempting to foster in recent weeks,” he says. “While the decision made was likely due to convenience and circumstance, The IPC has established a precedent here, rendering it more difficult for possible exclusions in future events.”

  While the question of prohibiting teams was made murkier by the IPC ruling, McKee believes one additional step can be taken by sports organizations closer to home.

  “There is an enormous amount of Russian political capital extracted from the performances of Russian athletes, including those in the NHL,” he says. “North American sports leagues will need to start contemplating whether or not individual athletes may start feeling the consequences of a Russian sporting boycott as well.”

  Assistant Professors of Sport Management Taylor McKee and Michael Naraine are available for media interviews.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University [email protected] or 905-347-1970 

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases

• Brock awarded more than $440k from CIHR for research on older adult memory, child spirituality

  Wednesday, March 02, 2022 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 1 March 2022 – R0024

  Identifying ways to help older adults remember events and understanding how spirituality shapes the physical health conditions of young people are the goals of two Brock University research projects recently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

  Brock Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging Karen Campbell is using her five-year CIHR Project Grant to research mechanisms in the brain and nervous system that contribute to age-related declines in associative memory.

  Associative memory occurs when different pieces of information that have a relevant connection are linked together, such as a name and face. Older adults often experience ‘hyper-binding’ where key new information, such as learning someone’s name at a dinner party, is linked to something irrelevant, like a football game blasting in the background.

  “Irrelevant linking can get in the way of things we want to remember,” says Campbell.

  The researcher will use neurological and sociological data collected by the U.K.-based Cambridge Centre for Aging and Neuroscience to determine the extent to which hyper-binding occurred in previous associative memory experiments at the Centre.

  Campbell and her team will then conduct experiments in which the brain wave patterns of older adults will be recorded as they watch a movie to see how hyper-binding affects older adults’ ability to recognize and process event boundaries. These occur when an activity or location ends and another one begins, for example, working at a desk and then going to a coffee shop with a friend.

  Moving from one event to another may affect memory, as seen in the common experience of entering the kitchen and then promptly forgetting what to get from the refrigerator.

  To wrap up the research, Campbell and her team will be aiming to create a new way of helping older adults increase their memory of events by making event boundaries more distinct.

  “We hope that by getting people to stop and reflect on what just happened, it will improve their ability to recall that event later on,” she says. “We want to develop a simple strategy that people can use in everyday life.”

  With her one-year CIHR Bridge Grant, Brock Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Valerie Michaelson will be pursuing her research project “Establishing Spirituality as a Social Determinant of Health.”

  Social determinants of health are economic, political and social non-medical factors that influence health outcomes such as education, income, housing and early childhood development.

  “The determinants of health are the resources required to meet our daily needs and in Canada, these resources are unequally distributed,” says Michaelson.

  She and her team will study how non-material resources like spirituality are unequally distributed across income levels, meaning not all children have access to the experiences and conditions necessary to develop a deeper sense of spirituality.

  By spirituality, Michaelson’s team means having a sense of meaning and purpose in life, and having connections to oneself, others and nature.

  She and her team will analyze information already gathered in a previous study and interview children who have experienced socio-economic marginalization before generating new theories based on the information gathered.

  “This project will expand the ways that the social determinants of health are understood and provide new insights into health threats caused by socio-economic challenges,” says Michaelson. “The team sees this as a matter of social justice and inclusion.”

  Michaelson’s and Campbell’s CIHR grants total $440,425, which Brock Vice-President, Research Tim Kenyon calls “a welcome investment in research with extraordinary potential.”

  “Dr. Campbell’s and Dr. Michaelson’s work engages some of the most significant lived experiences and challenges that people encounter over their lives,” he says. “This research will enable and inform the creation of programs to support young and older Canadians.”

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University [email protected] or 905-347-1970

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases