Linda J Borish Author & Editor

Gerald R. Gems, PhD, is a professor in the kinesiology department at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Gems serves on the Executive Council and Scientific Committee of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport and is a past president of the North American Society for Sport History. He presented the 2016 Routledge Keynote where he received the Routledge Prize in Sport History.

Dr. Gems is an international scholar and the author of more than 200 publications, including 18 books. He was president of the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) from 2003 to 2005 as well as the book review editor of the Journal of Sport History for more than two decades. He also received the Fulbright Senior Specialist Award for 2007 to 2012 and was an Illinois Roads Scholar in history from 1999 to 2003.

Dr. Gems earned his PhD in sport history at the University of Maryland. In addition to his role at North Central College, Dr. Gems serves as the vice president for the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES).

Linda J. Borish, PhD, an associate professor of history and gender and women’s studies at Western Michigan University and is jointly appointed in the departments of history and gender and women’s studies. Dr. Borish has focused her research on American women’s sport and health history. Her research has appeared in both national and international publications. She is lead editor for The Routledge History of American Sport (Routledge, 2016), and was selected in 2001-2002 as the International Ambassador for the North American Society for Sport History and also served on its Executive Council and Publications Board. She is executive producer and historian of the documentary film Jewish Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympics and has received numerous research grants related to American women and sport history in rural and urban contexts. Borish was the book review coeditor of the Journal of Sport History from 1996 to 2000.

Dr. Borish earned her PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland at College Park. In addition to her role at Western Michigan University, Borish is a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University.

Gertrud Pfister, PhD, is a professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She has earned PhDs in sport history and sociology at the University of Regensburg and the Ruhr-University Bochum. She was president of the International Sport Sociology Society from 2001 to 2007. Pfister was also president of the International Society for the History of Sport and Physical Education from 1993 to 2000 and won the association’s award for lifelong achievements in the area of sport history in 2005.

 She won the Darlene Kluka Award of the Women`s Sport Foundation in 2006, the Award of the European Working Group Women in Sport in 2009, the Dorothy Ainsworth Research Award of the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women (IAPESGW), and the Els Schröder Award of the German Gymnastic Association (DTB) for research on women and sport 2013.

Pfister earned honorary doctorates at the Semmelweis University in Budapest 2007 and at the University of Malmö in 2013.

She received tthe Order of the Dannebrog, as a knight 1. Class, from the Danish queen in 2015 and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1. Class, in 2016.

 Pfister is a fellow of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education and the European College of Sport Science.