Human Rights Lecture 2026: Is football a net good for humanity?

The School of Humanities at the University of Southampton, in partnership with Amnesty International (Southampton group), is excited to present Miguel Delaney, chief football writer for The Independent, to deliver the 11th Human Rights Lecture on Monday 2 March in person and online.

There’s a strong argument that football is the most popular cultural pursuit to have ever existed, crossing more borders and reaching more people than anything else, provoking intense emotion across the planet. This potentially brings many positives, from genuine community value and a benign national awareness, to positive impact in terms of issues like inclusivity and a sense of collectivism. The sport clearly has an unprecedented social power - but also an unprecedented commercial and political power. Many of the most questionable interests in the world - from vulture funds to autocratic states - seek to use it and exploit that power, often very successfully, with many other effects. This therefore provokes the pressing question for the game: is football actually a net good for humanity? And how does sport more widely impact global human rights?

Miguel Delaney is chief football writer for The Independent newspaper, a role he’s been in since 2017, having worked as a football reporter for 20 years. He has covered four men’s World Cups and seventeen Champions League finals and is the current Football Supporters’ Association football writer of the year. He is also the author of the international best seller States of Play: how sportswashing took over football, which won the Charles Tyrwhitt Football Book of the Year award and was shortlisted for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year award in 2025. Miguel Delaney is half-Irish, half-Spanish, having grown up in Dublin, and has lived in London for almost 14 years.

The series was initiated by and continues to be organised between members of the local Southampton Amnesty International group and the School of Humanities in the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. This series has now held ten distinguished speaker events from a wide range of areas involving human rights, including charity workers, lawyers, academics, and activists. The most recent distinguished speaker in the series was Kate Adie from the BBC. Subjects have ranged across disciplinary fields (law and human rights; police and human rights; women’s rights; children’s rights; LGBT rights, etc) as well as different geographical areas (e.g., UK, Myanmar), sometimes focussing on very specific examples, and sometimes raising more general philosophical questions.

Guests can join this event in person at Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, or online. Please select your ticket choice when booking.

We encourage guests who wish to join in person to register at your earliest opportunity as spaces are strictly limited.

If you have any questions about this event please contact [email protected].

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