/ August 9, 2022/

Interview Professors – Ian Henry

Dr. Ian Henry is a professor of Leisure Management and Policy and the director of the Centre for Olympic Studies & Research in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University, UK.
From 1976-1980, Dr. Henry worked in facility management and sports administration in local government, before taking up lectureships at Ilkley

College in 1980, Leeds Polytechnic in 1987 and Loughborough University in 1989. Dr. Henry has been a visiting professor at various universities around the world including France, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan.

Q : What was your motivation for joining this program?

Most universities and most countries are much more intercultural now than they were 10 years before. So, it’s effective life for us and I enjoy working with these groups. When Professor Kang approached me about working for a week in DTM, I was delighted because I found this kind of group is much more engaging and much more interesting to work with as they have a range of experiences within the classroom.

Q : What kind of benefits do you think this program brings to students?

The program has experienced people in the room and the students learned a lot from each other as well as getting a lot from the program. The students are taught with the materials adapted to a different cultural and social context. For example, we worked on the applications of logic modules for designing an evaluative policy system for sports development. The context within which people work is very important and the program has very different contexts with students from various countries such as Mongolia, Colombia, Pakistan and so on. Looking at how these students seek to apply the generic material to the concrete situation of their own culture is very interesting from my point of view. It’s much more challenging and interesting exercise for them as they need to apply their lessons to their local circumstances.