Christian Koller on Sport, War and Power Politics
At CRSA, we're proud to count Christian Koller among our members. Director of the Swiss Social Archives and Titular Professor of Modern History at the University of Zurich, Koller has spent more than two decades studying sport alongside social movements and the history of violence, work that has earned him a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. He also co-directs Swiss Sports History, the platform that opens up Swiss sports history for schools, clubs and the wider public: https://www.sportshistory.ch/
Recently, he has added some new pieces to that long-running body of work, this time on how sport and armed conflict intertwine. In one, Koller traces the overlap between the two across more than a century of European history.
Read the essay: https://www.hope.uzh.ch/conexus/article/view/10224
A closer look at the present day follows in a piece written for the Swiss Armed Forces, examining how sport has become entangled with the war in Ukraine.
Read the article: https://www.vtg.admin.ch/dam/de/sd-web/jASGtHt8FUd6/stratos_digital_129_Koller_Sport%20im%20Krieg_def.pdf
Koller was also asked by Swiss public broadcaster SRF for his take on this year's men's football World Cup and what it means when the tournament and world events collide.
Read the interview: https://www.srf.ch/news/international/gastgeber-usa-krieg-fuehren-und-die-wm-austragen-wie-geht-das-zusammen
Another recent article examines sport as a tool of Russian foreign policy.
Read the article: https://rgow.eu/zeitschrift/2026/6/aussenpolitisches-instrument-sport-in-putins-russland
A further piece on dictatorships' sporting presence in Switzerland has just appeared in the journal Les Sports Modernes, in an issue devoted to sport and politics.
Find the issue: https://www.alphil.com/livres/1489-1856-les-sports-modernes-numero-4-2026.html
And there's more. For his sport-related work, his CRSA profile is the place to look.
Read more: https://www.crsa.uzh.ch/en/people/ordinary-members/christiankoller.html