KC’s Summer of Global Goals (free event)

Every four years, the World Cup brings together fans from around the globe to celebrate the most widely popular sport in the world: football (or soccer, if you’re American). This year’s tournament broke a number of records, including the most teams ever competing (48) and the first time three countries have co-hosted the event (Mexico, Canada, and the United States). Not only does the major sporting event have a rich and complicated history, but this year’s historic nature introduces brand new impacts for Kansas City as a first-time host city. After six games, guests in the hundreds of thousands, and complicated shifts in politics and infrastructure, Kansas City will end the summer much differently than it was at the start. This program showcases four UMKC professors of various disciplines to discuss the history, cultural shifts, and environmental impacts of the World Cup on Kansas City.

Registration link: https://www.irckc.org/what-we-do/irc-events-calendar/#id=10840&cid=1742&wid=2201&type=Cal

About the Panelists:
Born in Lincolnshire to a military family, Stephen Dilks attended school in Cyprus, worked on farms and in factories, busked for money in the Paris Metro and across Europe, and has traveled to every state in the USA except Hawaii. Dilks has research interests in Irish modernism, discourses of civil rights, and relationships between art, commerce, and politics. He is currently writing a book about coverage of the Irish Independence movement in nineteenth-century Dublin newspapers. Dilks plays indoor soccer and hosts a music trivia night. The first in his family to attend school beyond the age of seventeen, Dilks earned a First Class Honors Degree in English Studies, Psychology, and Philosophy from the University of Stirling, Scotland. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at Rutgers Graduate School in New Jersey.

David Freeman is an Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at UMKC. He is a Dutch Atlantic World historian who writes extensively on Dutch merchants trading through Buenos Aires, including his first book, A Silver River in a Silver World: Dutch Trade in the Rio de la Plata, 1648-1678 (Cambridge, 2020). He has also written on Dutch impressions of Spain through late eighteenth-century travel accounts. His other research interests include international soccer and the history of Christianity. At UMKC, Dr. Freeman teaches courses on early modern European history as well as religious history, including early Christianity and the Reformation.

Dr. Jacob A. Wagner is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning + Design, the Director of the Urban Studies Program, and Faculty Director and Co-founder of the UMKC Center for Neighborhoods. Dr. Wagner teaches courses in urban planning and urban studies focused on neighborhood planning, equity and community development in the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design (AUPD). He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Design. Dr. Wagner actively represents Kansas City in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) as a founding member of Kansas City’s City of Music focal point organization – Creative City KC. He served on the Vacant Lot Task Force for the Environmental Management Commission of the City of Kansas City, MO and is the past President of the Board of Cultivate KC.

Dr. Julia Crowley is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Crowley's research interests include disaster debris management planning, plastic waste reduction, social vulnerability and disasters, risk perception, and environmental justice. Her research was heavily inspired by her time in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer where she served from 2009-2012.