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
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Diplomacy, Sports