Simon C. Darnell is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research interests include the relationships between sport, international development and peacebuilding; climate change and environmental sustainability in sport-for-development, and the place of social activism in the culture of sport.
He has conducted research on sport for development in the Caribbean (Cuba, Jamaica) and southern Africa (Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho), and also examined the role of global North countries and the experiences of international volunteers in the sport for development sector.
He has published widely on the topic of sport, politics and development including: ‘The History and Politics of Sport-for-Development: Activists, Ideologues and Reformers’ (with Russell Field and Bruce Kidd, 2019, Palgrave MacMillan) and ‘Sport and Social Movements: From the Local to the Global’ (with colleagues, 2014, Bloomsbury Academic).
He is also co-editor (with Rob Millington) of ‘Sport, Development and Environmental Sustainability’ (2020, Routledge).
In 2024, he was named one of the inaugural fellows of the University of Toronto’s SDG’s Scholars Academy.