Keynote speaker: Dr Steve Ingham, one of world’s leading applied sport scientists.

The Science and Art of Support: Clarity, Craft, and Collective Effort 
 
This keynote will explore the critical ingredients underpinning successful support in elite sport. Dr Steve Ingham will draw on three decades of experience working with some of the UK’s most celebrated athletes. Using the story of Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill’s recovery and return to Olympic gold as a central case study, the session will unpack how clarity of direction, teamwork, and lateral thinking are essential when navigating the complex, high-stakes terrain of performance, comeback from injury and peaking when it matters. 
 
The talk will also reference experiences working with Sir Steve Redgrave and footballer David Brooks to highlight the dual necessity of technical excellence and the craft of working with people. These stories will illustrate how elite support and rehabilitation isn’t merely about protocols—it’s about coordinated human endeavour, problem solving under pressure, and supporting athletes through their most vulnerable moment.

Keynote speaker: Professor Benita Olivier, Strategic leader in healthcare research and injury prevention researcher

“Beyond the “What” to the “How” and “Why Now?”: Implementing Effective Injury Prevention in Sports”

There is a critical gap between injury prevention knowledge and its practical implementation in sports settings. In this keynote, Professor Benita Olivier will address why, despite proven effectiveness, injury prevention programmes often fail to be adopted consistently or correctly.

The sporting careers of many promising young athletes get derailed by preventable injury, and the session will examine the multi-level barriers that impede implementation at individual, organisational, and systemic levels. The presentation will touch upon controversies like injury prevention vs risk reduction, and unpack the psychological challenges unique to prevention work, where success means “nothing happens”, making validation difficult in performance-focused environments.

Beyond identifying challenges, this talk will provide a practical framework for successful implementation, highlighting structural, educational, and behavioural solutions that have demonstrated success across various sporting contexts. Attendees will gain actionable strategies to transform injury prevention from an “add-on” to an integrated, valued component of athletic development.

This forward-looking keynote will challenge researchers, practitioners, and system leaders to move beyond simply knowing what works to ensuring it happens consistently, effectively, and starting now.

Masterclass with Dr. Michael McCluskey, Lecturer in Higher Education Practice at Ulster University.

“What’s the Real Value? Rethinking Impact with Social Return on Investment (SROI)”

Rehabilitation interventions often deliver far reaching benefits that extend well beyond health outcomes alone, enabling greater independence, reducing caregiver burden, improving social participation, community engagement and enhancing wellbeing. Yet these multidimensional impacts are frequently undervalued or overlooked by traditional evaluation methods that prioritise clinical or cost effectiveness.

This session introduces Social Return on Investment (SROI).  This is a framework designed to evaluate the broader social, economic, and personal value created by an intervention. SROI offers a structured approach to capturing stakeholder-defined outcomes and translating them into a clear, monetised expression of impact.  While it originated in the social enterprise sector, SROI is increasingly being applied in health and rehabilitation research to demonstrate value and craft the narrative of impact in ways that resonate with funders, commissioners, and communities.

This talk will provide an accessible introduction to SROI for researchers new to the method. It will cover the core principles, key stages of an SROI evaluation and how the approach can complement more traditional economic evaluations. Real-world examples from rehabilitation settings will be used to illustrate practical application and the kinds of value that SROI can uncover.

Whether you’re designing a new study, evaluating a complex intervention, or seeking to strengthen the case for investment in rehabilitation, this session will offer a fresh lens for demonstrating what your work is really worth.

Register your place today!

Full details including pricing for our full 2-day CPD and Conference ticket or 1-day Conference ticket can be found on our registration page here