Participant Info

First Name
Heather
Last Name
Dichter
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
De Montfort University
Website URL
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/heatherdichter
Keywords
Olympics, sport, diplomacy, Germany, Cold War, international sport, Olympic bidding, mega-events, Olympic Games
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

CURRENT POSITION:

De Montfort University, School of Humanities and Performing Arts, Leicester, UK
Associate Professor (September 2017 – Present)
Principal Lecturer (January – August 2017)
International Centre for Sports History and Culture

PREVIOUS POSITIONS:

Western Michigan University, Department of Human Performance and Health Education, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
Assistant Professor (August 2015 – December 2016)

Ithaca College, Department of Sport Management and Media, Ithaca, NY, USA
Assistant Professor (Sept. 2012 – July 2015)

York College of Pennsylvania, Department of History, York, PA, USA
Adjunct Professor (Jan. 2011 – May 2012)

Franklin University Switzerland, Lugano, Switzerland
Faculty Fellow (Summer 2011)

University of Toronto, Department of History and Faculty of Physical Education and Health, Toronto, ON, Canada
Lecturer (Sept. 2008 – April 2010)

Norges Idrettshøgskole, Oslo, Norway
Visiting Scholar (June – August 2008)

EDUCATION:

Ph.D., University of Toronto, Department of History (2008)
Dissertation: “Sporting Democracy: The Western Allies’ Reconstruction of Germany Through Sport, 1944-1952”

M.A., University of North Carolina, Department of History (2002)

B.A., University of Michigan, Department of History (2000)

Recent Publications

Monographs

Heather L. Dichter, Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021).

Edited Collections

Heather L. Dichter, ed., Soccer Diplomacy: International Relations and Football Since 1914 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020).
*Shortlisted, North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Anthology Award, 2021
*Shortlisted, Telegraph Sports Book Awards, Football Book of the Year

Heather L. Dichter and Sarah Teetzel, eds., International Journal of the History of Sport special issue: “Winter Olympics” 27, no. 13 (2020).

Heather L. Dichter and Wray Vamplew, eds., International Journal of the History of Sport special issue: “Aspiration and Reflection: Sport Historians on Sport History” 34, no. 5-6, (2017).

J. Simon Rofe and Heather L. Dichter, eds., Diplomacy & Statecraft special issue: “Diplomacy and Sport: Message, Mode, and Metaphor?” 27, no. 2 (2016).

Heather L. Dichter and Andrew Johns, eds. Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft and International Relations since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

Heather L. Dichter and Bruce Kidd, eds. Olympic Reform Ten Years Later (London: Routledge, 2012).
*originally published as special issue of Sport in Society (v. 14, no. 3).

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Heather L. Dichter, “Canadian Government Involvement in Calgary’s Failed 1968 Winter Olympic Bid,” International Journal of the History of Sport 38 (2021), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2021.1937997

Heather L. Dichter, “The Diplomatic Turn: The New Relationship Between Sport and Politics,” International Journal of the History of Sport 38, no. 2-3 (2021), 247-263.

Heather L. Dichter and Sarah Teetzel, “The Winter Olympics: A Century of Games on Ice and Snow,” International Journal of the History of Sport 37, no. 13 (2020), 1215-1235.

Lindsey Blom, Paz Magat, and Heather L. Dichter, “Grassroots Diplomacy through Coach Education: Americans & Jordanians and Tajiks,” Soccer & Society 21, no. 5 (2019), 535-550.

Heather L. Dichter, “Animalympics, Or How I Became a Sport Scholar,” International Journal of the History of Sport 34, no. 5-6 (2017), 335-339.

Heather L. Dichter, “‘We have allowed our decisions to be determined by political considerations’: The Cold War German Question in the International Ski Federation,” Sport in History 37, no. 3 (2017), 290-308.

Heather L. Dichter, “Corruption in the 1960s?: Rethinking the Origins of Unethical Olympic Bidding Tactics,” International Journal of the History of Sport 33, no. 6-7 (2016), 666- 682.

Heather L. Dichter, “Sporting Relations: Diplomacy, Small States, and Germany’s Postwar Return to International Sport,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 27, no. 2 (2016), 340-359.

Heather L. Dichter, “Diplomatic and International History: Athletes and Ambassadors,” International Journal of the History of Sport 32, no. 15 (2015), 1741-1744.

Heather L. Dichter, “Corporate Consolidation and Content Management Systems in College Athletics Websites: A Case Study of Mgoblue.com,” International Journal of Sport Communication 7, no. 2 (2014), 234-244.

Heather L. Dichter, “Kicking Around International Sport: West Germany’s Return to the International Community through Football,” International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 17 (2013), 2031-2051.

Heather L. Dichter, “Rebuilding Physical Education in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany, 1945-1949,” History of Education, 41, no. 6 (Nov. 2012), 787-806.

Heather Dichter, “‘Strict measures must be taken’: Wartime Planning and the Allied Control of Sport in Occupied Germany,” Stadion 34, no. 2 (2008), 193-217.

Book Chapters

Heather L. Dichter, “’Football more important than Berlin’: East German Football vs. NATO,” in Soccer Diplomacy: International Relations and Football Since 1914, ed. Heather L. Dichter (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020).

Heather L. Dichter, “Game Plan for Democracy: Sport and Youth in Occupied West Germany,” in Transforming Occupation in the Western Zones of Germany: Politics, Everyday Life and Social Interactions, 1945-55, ed. Camilo Erlichman and Christopher
Knowles (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018).

Heather L. Dichter, “Denazification, Democratization, and the Cold War: Diplomatic Manipulation of the German Olympic Committee,” in Defending the American Way of Life, ed. Kevin Witherspoon and Toby Rider (Little Rock: University of Arkansas Press, 2018).

Heather L. Dichter, “’A game of political ice hockey’: NATO Restrictions on East German Sport Travel in the Aftermath of the Berlin Wall,” in Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft and International Relations since 1945, ed. Heather Dichter and Andrew Johns. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

Heather L. Dichter, “Rebuilding Physical Education in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany, 1945-1949,” in Sport, Health and the Body in the History of Education, ed. Mark Freeman (London: Routledge, 2014).

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Germany, Norway, US
Expertise by Geography
Germany, North America, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, United States, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
8, 9
Expertise by Topic
Diplomacy, Sports