Fifth-year PhD candidate Andrew Hao recently returned to Austin from two weeks at the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he completed research on the Asian Games Federation’s admission of the Chinese Olympic Committee in the early 1970s. Andrew’s research was funded by the International Olympic Committee itself. He was one of just six recipients from around the world to receive one of the IOC’s most prestigious and competitive grants, the 2019 PhD Students and Early Career Academics Research Grant. The Olympic grant program has been around for two decades, annually funding some of the most exciting and promising humanities and social science research pertaining to Olympism. This year, Andrew received his award alongside winners from Great Britain, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. 

While in the Olympic archive, Andrew consulted the Lord Killanin Collection, the Asian Games Collection, various National Olympic Committee Collections, and the Montreal Olympic Games Collection, all gathering primary sources for his upcoming dissertation. Said dissertation examines elite sport in China during the Cultural Revolution. The sources garnered in Lausanne will be used in a chapter on the entrance of China into the Olympic family, focusing on the extensive negotiations that took place between the IOC, the Asian Games Federation, and the All-China Sports Federation (the predecessor of the Chinese Olympic Committee).