James Anthony (Tony) Mangan (1939-2025)

Obituary. James Anthony (Tony) Mangan, founding editor of this journal, died suddenly on the 8th December 2025, aged 86. Mangan was a pioneering figure who exerted a lasting and far-reaching impact on sport history. He had a major role in its scholarly emergence as a very significant sub-discipline, helping it to achieve the academic respectability it had lacked. There were other scholars, such as Eric Dunning, Tony Mason, or Wray Vamplew who also built deserved reputations, but his contribution was certainly outstanding during that time. He was a scholar of real distinction who brought in a far wider global community with, his hugely prolific published contributions to the sports history field on very much a global canvas, his editorial work, his entrepreneurial abilities and his mentoring of some excellent postgraduates and scholars from overseas or from less conventional backgrounds.