Professor Tom Baum (HRM) was a keynote speaker at the University of the West of Scotland’s seminar on ‘Volunteering – A Tool for Events in the 21st Century’. Professor Baum’s presentation was entitled, “Would the show go on without them? Researching the Contribution of volunteers to global sporting events.”
Together with Dr Kirsten Holmes of Curtin University, Australia, Professor Baum was joint-convenor of two sessions at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference in Edinburgh. The theme of their sessions was ‘The Human Geography of Special Events and Festivals’ and the eight papers covered topics such as event volunteering and sporting allegiances.
Dr Holmes and Professor Baum presented findings from their Event Volunteer Evaluation (EVE) project (together with other colleagues from Australia and New Zealand) which is a comparative, international study aimed at gaining a better understanding of volunteer demographics and motivation across a wide variety of cultural and sporting events.