2026 Conference Update

Bruce: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Irish Sport and Exercise Sciences  Association podcast. I’m your host, Bruce Wardrop, and in today’s episode, I’m chatting with  Ciara Sinnott O’Connor, ISESA board member and chair of this year’s conference team. Last  year we had our inaugural conference in SC2, Waterford, which was a superb event and really  showcased the potential that lies in bringing the whole Irish sport and exercise sciences  community together. This year’s conference will take place on Thursday the twenty first and  Friday the twenty second of May at Technological University Shannon in Athlone, building on  the outstanding success of last year. This year, the ISESA looks forward to continuing to grow,  connect and strengthening the Irish sport and exercise sciences community, informed by  feedback on our first event. The programme will feature a mix of symposia, oral and poster  presentations, discussions and workshops. Creating a space for students, academics,  researchers, practitioners and industry partners to showcase their work and exchange ideas.  With that in mind, members of the sport and exercise sciences community are warmly invited  to submit proposals across this range of formats. Your contributions will help shape a diverse  and engaging conference programme full of content that is relevant to you. If you have a  proposal that you would like to suggest, you can do so via our website. The deadline for  submissions is Wednesday, the fourth of March before midnight, so as of today, you have just  under a week to make your suggestions. Okay, that’s enough from me. Here’s my chat with  Ciara, who has so much more to share. Ciara, how are you doing? You’re very welcome to the  podcast today.

Ciara Sinnott O’Connor: Thank you for having me. It’s great to speak to you again. We’re coming up on  just about a year since we had the conference last year, and I believe that you were very keen  to say yes to be the conference chair for the upcoming year. So tell me about that. Tell me  about what the conference chair does. Um, I suppose I joined the board of directors towards  the end of last year, and as part of that, I’m on the events committee, and January rolls around  very quickly for planning our next ISESA conference. Um, and really, like we have a whole  committee of people that are working really hard to kind of get things sorted, where at the  moment we’re getting abstract submissions in and figuring out our keynotes and our  scheduling. But I’m just the the person to kind of tie it all together. And I suppose do little bits of  conference info like this. Your conference? The conference ringleader. Are you? Yeah. Pretty  much. And I suppose just making sure that we’re linking in as a committee with like Anne Marie, who does so much work for ISESA and reaching out to keynotes and arranging those  little bits as well. So fantastic. So, uh, like I said, it has been just about a year since the last  one I know. Um, I really enjoyed the conference in SC2 Waterford last year. It was a big honor  for us to host it down there. And we’re moving up to Athlone this year. What, uh, what do you  recall from last year if you were to think back to last year’s conference, what’s the standout  memory for you? Um, I think the fact that we were able to bring the sport and exercise science  communities in all the formats so academics, students, researchers, practitioners, everyone  was together and in the one room for two days. And I think that’s just really important because  we don’t often get those opportunities. We have very much discipline specific conferences.  Um, but that general community coming together, it’s rare. So I feel like it needs to be  celebrated annually. Yeah, I absolutely agree. It really was amazing to have everyone together.  You know, we’ve had in the past, we’ve had the postgraduate conference and we’ve had, like 

you said, discipline specific uh, conferences for certain groups of people, but having  everyone together was great and like it is a relatively. It’s a growing community in Ireland, but  still relatively small that we can do that, bring everyone together annually for a good old get  together. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us looking forward to this year’s conference. I know you guys  are busy planning, organizing and arranging, but what do you hope to bring this year? That  might be a little bit different from last year. So we talk a lot of the feedback from last year. Um,  and where we focused on maybe the keynotes being one sports science and one exercise  science. We have flipped that a little bit on its head for this year. So the content that will be  discipline specific is coming from all of the listeners, all of the community. Um, in the sport and  exercise world in Ireland. So we have opportunities for panel discussions, oral presentations,  symposiums, workshops, and that’s where we want to focus those discipline specific bits and  pieces. But for the keynotes, we’re very much focusing on that wider thought provoking the  discussion afterwards over coffee about maybe some of the content in areas around AI and  sport, bad science, myth busting, um, some of maybe the Instagram science models that we  see out there and then a piece around performing under pressure. So that’s kind of where our  keynote speakers will be focused. Um, and that’s really the plan that we’re going off for this  year. Okay, that sounds really interesting. So just give me those those again. AI in sports, uh,  performing under pressure, performing under pressure. Uh, bad science. And I suppose where  that’s coming from is a bit of a myth busting, but also the we as scientists need to be doing  good science. So by the time it gets down to the clickbait headlines in the newspaper, If it’s  been bad science from the start, it’s about seven times removed bad science. So actually  putting some of those pieces of work under a microscope and having those discussions, um, is  what we’ll be focused on one keynote. That sounds really, really interesting. I’m looking forward  to that one already. And then you mentioned that some of the other content, right, is going to  be coming from maybe from the sport science community themselves. I think maybe last year  we programmed what we think or what we thought people wanted, but this year we’re asking  the community to come forward with what they might want to share. Is that correct? Yeah. So  we’ve opened it up in terms of those like interactive workshops, panel discussions where you  can have four members in a chair and actually opening up topics for discussion, and then  people have options to to go to those things, be it if that’s in their field of interest and  symposiums again, about forty five minutes with some Q&A as well for up to three people  presenting. So really using those opportunities to hone in on the nitty gritty of sport and  exercise science. Whereas the keynotes are open to a more like a wider audience, I suppose.  Very good. So what? So yeah, the keynotes and some of those sessions you mentioned there,  they might come from maybe some people who are more established in the field, but what  about early researchers and current postgraduate students? There are opportunities for them  to get involved and share their content. Absolutely. So postgraduates can submit for oral  presentations and for poster presentations, and they can obviously attend and mix with  everyone and go to the keynotes and attend any of those sessions that might be of interest to  them. Um, and again, once we have all of our content and our schedule confirmed, we’ll be  able to put that out there. So people have their choice of sessions to attend on the days. And,  you know, I know we’ve always put an emphasis on the All Ireland All Ireland approach  and collaboration and getting everyone together outside of the scheduled sessions. Do we  have a bit of organized fun arranged as well? We do. We do. So we have a social evening in 

Sean’s bar. Um, so that will be on the Thursday evening. There is a morning run scheduled for  Friday as well, so little bits of opportunities for people to catch up. Uh, it’ll be a barbecue this  year. Sean’s bar with some live music afterwards, so hopefully anyone that’s able to attend for  the two days will be able to join us for that. Brilliant, brilliant. Um, and finally then, what about  some exhibitors and sponsors who might be listening and might want to get involved or know  anyone who got involved last year got some great exposure to the delegates and through our  social media and stuff like that. So for this year, um, what about people who want to get  involved in that way? Yeah. So information is up on our website. So, um, at the moment we are  contacting sponsors, companies, um, exhibitors that would have been there last year. Um, and  reaching out to some more companies as well. So if anyone is interested, there is a form to  complete online and someone will be in touch. Um, but yeah, we’re always open to any form of  sponsorship or exhibitors because I think it’s just a really good opportunity to link with the  community and have the conversations, and you just never know where a conversation can  lead. Absolutely. And I think that is so important. And it’s like, I’m just thinking back to last year,  I can remember, uh, some product demos and stuff like that and some really interesting buzz  around the stands that were there from the sponsors and exhibitors. So it is definitely  worthwhile getting involved. Yeah, absolutely. That is fantastic. Well, Ciara, I would hope that  maybe in another little while you’ll come back to us. You’ve teased us with some information  today, but I’m going to come back looking for more specifics a little bit closer to the time. So I  will look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you very much. Okay, so now you have  an idea of what’s ahead for the conference on Thursday the twenty first and Friday the twenty  second of May up in the Technological University the Shannon in Athlone. I don’t mean to bang  on about it, but last year’s conference really was a great success and after chatting with Ciara  there, it sounds like this year is going to be on a whole nother level. I’m genuinely looking  forward to attending. It’s a real highlight of the calendar year. All of the details we discussed  are available on our website, ISESA, and of course you can keep up to date with us via our  social media channels, so make sure you check us out on LinkedIn and Instagram.  Registration for the conference is open, so if you want to secure your ticket early, get on over  and click the link on our event page. Right, that’s it for today. I’ve got a touch of man flu this  week, and I don’t feel like I’m operating at full capacity, so if I sound a little bit different today,  that is why I’m actually amazed I got through this without a coughing or sneezing fit, so I guess  I must be on the mend. Okay, thanks for listening. I’ll catch you in the next episode.