Publications

Tom Kearney (2025) - A Few Facts About the Operational Safety of Transport for London's (TfL) Franchised Bus Operation (2014-2024)

Tom Kearney was hit by a bus in London's Oxford, resulting in near-death coma. But out of trauma can come good - this event changed his life and made him an all-seasons everyday open water swimmer. And campaigner for operational safety of London buses - no-one should every be hit by a bus. This short report tells of continuing short-fall in operational safety performance on London's buses. Photo: Tom Edwards, BBC

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Georgie Milner (2022) - Swimming and Social Exclusion in the UK. Undergraduate Dissertation in Human Sciences, University of Oxford.

This undergraduate dissertation examines how swimming provision in the Greater Manchester Area intersects with social exclusion. It argues that striving for equal access to swimming opportunities, via dismantling historical legacies of exclusion, forging safe spaces, and ensuring the provision of accessible swimming pools, is necessary for health and social justice.

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Grace Wright-Arora (2021) - “Where the Normal Rules Don’t Apply”: Cold-Water Swimming as a Postmodern Subculture of Resistance

This undergraduate dissertation from the University of Bristol examines cold water swimming as a political act. Resistance – to body shaming, to the physical constraints of a swimming pool – while an individual act, can also be political. Grace Wright-Arora wrote her undergraduate thesis on cold water swimming as a form of Foucauldian resistance. French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that where there is power, there is also resistance to it. In London, she interviewed people who swim at the Serpentine Swimming Club and the Hampstead Ponds, while near Bristol she interviewed people who swim at the Clevedon Marine Pool.

Stanley Ulijaszek (2022) - Kicking a stink in river waters

Open water swimmers in the UK are outraged by the continued dumping of raw sewage into rivers and the ocean. In this work, Stanley Ulijaszek is trying to make sense of it all, writing about the disconnects between legislation, regulation, provision, and use, that have gotten the UK into this watery mess. He calls it 'The Second Great Stink' (the first being in the nineteenth century), a time to rethink again these relationships so that swimming in clean waters is again assured.

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House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2022) - Water quality in rivers

Probably the first UK Parliamentary Report that gives wild swimming a place in much needed improvement of UK inland waters. The report states unambiguously that 'rivers in England are in a mess'. Section 2, entitled 'Rivers fit to swim in', concludes that 'Every community in the country should have access to waters—whether coastal or inland—that are safe for people to swim in without running the risk of falling ill'. And recommends that 'the Government actively encourage the designation of at least one widely used stretch of river for bathing in each water company area by 2025 at the latest'. The strongest statement of intent to find the metaphorical 'Bower by the silver Thames' that river swimmers seek.

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Stanley Ulijaszek (2021) - Swimming, leptospirosis, and me. An autopathography

In August 2021, Stanley Ulijaszek contracted leptospirosis, a truly vile disease. This is an account of his experience, real and hallucinatory. It examines the epidemiology of the disease and offers some thoughts about risk and infection associated with open water swimming.

Alex Foster (2020) - Facilitating cold-water immersion for metabolic health: Situating habitus, enskilment, and communities of practice in the context of a London Swimming Club. MPhil Thesis in Medical Anthropology, University of Oxford.

This MPhil thesis is an analysis of winter swimming and cold-water immersion at the Serpentine Swimming Club, where these practices have a deep history and strong tradition.

Duncan Goodhew in the 2001 UK Government House of Commons Report 'Testing the Waters - the Sport of Swimming'

"What three things would you three want us to do for swimming? We have never had a report on swimming ever. This is the first to be done." So spoke Member of Parliament Chris Wyatt at the Examination of Witnesses for this enquiry. Olympic gold medal swimmer Duncan Goodhew, MBE, was one of three witnesses. This report gives a window into the state of swimming in the UK at the turn of the millenium.

Caitlin Kraemer (2021) - Swimming in the City: Urban-River-Swimming as Spatial Appropriation in the Spree Canal in Central Berlin. Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture // No. 3.

This research article explores how architecture and urban design along the Spree Canal in central Berlin, through the urban river swimming with the Flussbad Berlin Project, can help reclaim urban nature and public liquid space.

Ben Cousins (2021) - Excerpts from an Ocean Diary -Simon's Town, South Africa

Ben Cousins tries to swim every day, snorkel and free-dive in the magnificent kelp forests near his home. For the past year he has kept a diary that details every swim, and tries to capture something of the intensity of his experiences. It chronicles his progress in seeking to understand this entrancing and mysterious underwater world. These excerpts from his diary represent some aspects of swimming and free-diving each month of the year.