St Mary’s Hosts International ISAK Kinanthropometry Conference

Earlier this month St Mary’s University, Twickenham (SMU) hosted the 2024 ISAK World Conference - XVIII World Conference on Kinanthropometry. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Theory to Practice’ and aimed to bridge the gap between research and real-world application.

The conference, which took place on the SMU campus, saw 100 delegates attend from across the world including Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, USA, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Poland, Norway, and the UK.

St Mary’s welcomed some insightful presentations from leaders in the field that highlighted the significance and need for the conference to explore the theme. All sessions were delivered in either English or Spanish, with live translation via headsets available throughout.

The programme included:
• 3 keynotes
• 6 invited speakers
• 1 discussion panel
• 1 practical workshop
• 26 oral communications
• 19 posters.

Among the invited speakers were current SMU Senior Lecturer in Sports Biomechanics Dr Ryan Mahaffey and previous SMU Nutrition Lecturer Dr Hilary Davies-Kershaw. Recent SMU graduate from the BSc Sport and Exercise Nutrition programme Jamie Petley also presented his undergraduate dissertation on the relationship between anthropometry and performance characteristics in rugby players.

Prior to the conference SMU hosted the ISAK executive council for two days of meetings, in addition to running a level 3 and level 4 re-accreditation workshop.

The conference was opened by Dr Leanne Griffiths, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Sport, Technology and Health Sciences at SMU.

Speaking on the success of the conference, Conference Chair Dr Nicola Brown and Conference Vice-Chair Dr James Fleming said, “We are delighted to have hosted the ISAK World Conference 2024 and to have welcomed so many international colleagues to St Mary’s. There was such a positive and upbeat atmosphere throughout the three days.

“It was an enormous undertaking to co-ordinate and deliver such a large event in two languages, and we thank all those involved for their contributions to making it such a success including Sam Ladipo and the conferencing team, Nik and the catering team, the AV/media team, and the finance and marketing teams.”