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Sports Policy in Cameroon: a PhD student’s perspective

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University of Leeds RiDNet (Researchers in Development Network) member and Leeds Trinity University PhD student Jo Clarke had her first journal article published in the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. Titled Sport Policy in Cameroon, the article draws on Jo's PhD which critically explores Sport for Development in Cameroon.

Jo recently returned from a fieldwork trip to Cameroon, during which she collected data for her PhD. She tells us more about her Cameroon experiences, her research, and how the process of getting her first peer-reviewed article published. 

Sport is a major part of my life. I have spent years watching it, playing it and coaching it, and now I am researching aspects of it. As a PhD student at Leeds Trinity, I am interested in researching sport and specifically how it is used within an international development setting. As part of my ongoing PhD research, I have recently spent six weeks in Cameroon, West Africa, where I collected a significant amount of data via interviews, participant observations and a participatory visual technique called stakeholder mapping.
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When I returned home to Leeds this time, as with all of my previous trips to Africa, people often ask me "how was it? how was Cameroon?" Which, to be honest, I find an incredibly hard question to summarise in a short response. I usually reply with something like "incredible, challenging, hair raising at times but worth it!".

Behind that short reply is a much bigger story of what happened and how I felt, reacted and coped with various fieldwork situations, which I hope to reflect on in my final thesis. As a westerner travelling to Cameroon, there is inevitably a period of adjusting to the local context and the way of life which for me includes the food, changeable weather, road conditions, and attitude towards women and foreigners, to name just a few. There are also language barriers, as Cameroon is both French and English speaking. But for me, what always stays in my mind, months and years after each visit to Cameroon, are the people who I meet and get to know – professionally, and sometimes socially.

Typically, my research and contacts in Cameroon enable me to spend time with PE and sports teachers, sports coaches, National Governing Bodies of Sport officials and Government ministry officials. Cameroonians love sport, in particular football, with current and former sports stars such as Roger Milla, Samuel Eto held up as national icons.

Having a passion for sport development and with a knowledge of Cameroon, I was introduced to the editor of the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, Professor Barry Houlihan, at a conference in January 2015 by my PhD supervisor Dr Paul Salisbury. Professor Houlihan and I discussed the collection of country profiles which he has encouraged from around the world detailing the sporting policy of particular nations. With this in mind, I enquired as to whether the journal would be interested in receiving a profile for Cameroon. Fast forward 12 months, and the article was accepted following several re-drafts, a peer-reviewed process and an awful lot of learning on the job about how to deal with publishers, for example. And this week, it has finally been published.
Read the article in full on the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics website. For more thoughts and reflection as I progress through my PhD, follow me on Twitter or visit my blog.