PhD Position Opening (M/F) - CONTRADOP - The Enhanced Games as a Sporting and Anti-Doping Counter-Model

Job Description

Thesis Subject

The Enhanced Games: Between the Recomposition of Athletic Careers and the Reconfiguration of International Sports Governance and Anti-Doping Efforts

In 2024, nearly 300,000 anti-doping tests were conducted under the global regulatory system established by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 1999. WADA's mission is to harmonize rules and legislation to guarantee competitive fairness and the credibility of international sport (Hanstad, Smith & Waddington, 2008). Consequently, high-level athletes included in the "registered testing pool" are subject, without exception, to both in-competition and out-of-competition testing. Yet, despite a strengthened World Anti-Doping Program, this governance gives rise to tensions among sports institutions, states, and markets, revealing the challenging articulation between international norms and national implementation (Bodin & Sempé, 2006; Demeslay, 2016; Zubizarreta, 2021).
These tensions are part of a long history of conflicts and internal struggles within the Olympic movement (Guéry & Martinache, 2023). However, the emergence of the Enhanced Games constitutes an unprecedented rupture, as this event advocates for the regulated use of performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision and explicitly proposes a counter-model to the international anti-doping regime and the Olympic system. This private competition, backed notably by Donald Trump Jr. (1789 Capital) and scheduled for May 2026 in Las Vegas, is the initiative of two entrepreneurs, Aron D'Souza and Peter Thiel. The latter, a billionaire, is particularly well-known for having served as an advisor to and supporter of Donald Trump, as well as for his conservative, libertarian positions and his criticism of international organizations. Furthermore, this initiative takes place within a context of tensions between WADA and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which suspended its financial contribution to the Agency while denouncing a lack of transparency. The Enhanced Games thus introduce a fundamental rupture: creating a competitive space that allows for the redefinition of sporting norms outside the multilateral framework imposed by the IOC and WADA. This project thus questions and sheds light on contemporary transformations in sports governance, the rise of private actors challenging the established institutional order, and the questioning of the democratic ideal of sport based on equal rules and merit-based performance (Mignon, 2004). Moreover, within a transhumanist imaginary where the technological enhancement of the body becomes legitimate (Queval, 2008), doping here undergoes a process of "stigma reversal" (Goffman, 1963): moving from an act of cheating contrary to the rules to the freely chosen adoption of a model rooted in scientific innovation.
This reversal invites the implementation of an ambitious project structured around three levels of analysis. At the micro-level, it aims to study the trajectories of the athletes (approximately fifty) as well as those of the coaches (three at this stage), executives, and doctors who choose to participate in the Enhanced Games. This first level will allow for the identification of the social and professional conditions contributing to the emergence of this counter-model, based on a prosopographical framework analyzing the athletic, economic, and institutional profiles of the actors. Complementing the attention paid to the event's promoters, as well as the origins and forms of investment, these trajectories will enrich the understanding of the political project's scope—beyond the individual enterprise—which aims to compete with existing international institutions and redefine performance and governance norms in globalized sport. At the meso-level, this project aims to analyze the controversies and polemics generated by the event, utilizing press and social media corpora. This will serve to examine the forms of mobilization at various levels—disciplinary, national, and international—and to identify opposing collectives, actors, and resistance, among others. Finally, at the macro-level, its ambition is to examine how this event challenges the international institutional architecture, insofar as it contributes to the weakening of a multilateral consensus that had hitherto been presumed to be operating (Demeslay, 2013; Demeslay & Zubizarreta, 2025).
Consequently, this project will simultaneously enrich several axes of the GDR Sports et Activités Physiques (Sports and Physical Activities Research Network) by addressing and intersecting questions and challenges related to performance (Axis 1), health (Axis 2), the educational values of sport (Axis 3), and territories (Axis 4). Furthermore, the logic of enhanced performance inherent to the Enhanced Games—which contributes to redefining sporting norms, athlete trajectories, and public anti-doping policies—will provide a social sciences perspective on the cross-cutting axis of "social and technological innovations."

The originality of this project lies first and foremost in its object of study. The Enhanced Games constitute an unprecedented and subversive event whose first edition is imminent. In this regard, the timeline for completing a PhD on this topic is particularly opportune for capturing the design, unfolding, reception, and repercussions of this event.
Its originality is further demonstrated by its interscalar scope: understanding the mechanisms behind the "exit" (Hirschman, 1970) of high-level athletes who choose to leave the traditional international competition circuit; analyzing the discourse and the more institutional and collective mobilizations for or against the event and its stated principles; and finally, examining the power of political expression (Chateauraynaud, 2007; 2011) that reveals asymmetries on an international scale.
The originality also resides in its theoretical ambition. This multi-sited approach requires combining the sociology of professional trajectories and bifurcations (Bourdieu, 1984; Dubar 1991; 2000), the sociology of disputes and regimes of justification (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991; Chateauraynaud & Torny, 1999), and the mobilization of frameworks from political sociology. On this point, the concepts of the counter-model and stigma reversal (Goffman, 1963) allow for a rich discussion within policy transfer studies (Knill & Lenschow, 2005).
Finally, the originality of the project lies in its methodological dimension. It relies on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data (as deployed in the research plan).

Research Plan
The project is organized around three complementary axes and levels of analysis.
- Actor Trajectories and Professional Bifurcations
The prosopographical analysis of the promoters, executives, doctors, coaches, and athletes participating in the event requires, first, an exploration of all available sources (social media, institutional websites, discussion threads, blogs, press releases) and the collection of life histories. Beyond the qualitative dimension of these trajectories, a database will be constructed using various indicators and variables: sociodemographic data (age, nationality, discipline, performance level, etc.), economic information (financial situation, reliance on sponsorship, etc.), and information regarding their background, particularly their athletic career (clubs, achievements, sanctions, suspensions, injuries, etc.). This heterogeneous collection will allow for the charting of distinct trajectories and the identification of socio-professional variables capable of shedding light on why individuals align with this counter-model. Thus, variables such as career stage (ascending, stabilized, end-of-career, downgrading, conflicts with sports institutions, etc.), disciplinary sanctions, international mobility, reliance on traditional economic circuits, and embeddedness within entrepreneurial or technological networks will serve as explanatory leads.
- The Event as an Object of Controversy and Polemic
At a second level, a press corpus will be compiled using the Factiva and Europresse databases to contextualize and track disputes surrounding the Enhanced Games over time and internationally. This will enable a fine-grained analysis of critiques and arguments using textual data analysis software (such as Prospéro© and Iramuteq), facilitating an iterative movement between sociological inquiries and the source material (Chateauraynaud, 2003). The analysis will focus on argumentative registers (health, freedom, ethics, innovation), the polarization and evolution of stances, and the international circulation of the ideas deployed. Social media analysis, via data collection across various platforms (X, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn), will complement this corpus, allowing for the mapping of discursive communities, the identification of actor coalitions, and the measurement of the intensity and diffusion of the disputes.
- Reconfiguration of International Governance
This axis contextualizes individual trajectories and controversies/polemics within the potential structural reconfigurations of the international sports and anti-doping regime. Semi-structured interviews with representatives of institutions (anti-doping organizations, federations, Olympic and Paralympic committees), public and intergovernmental authorities (UNESCO), or legal experts will provide deeper insight into the logic of bifurcation, the actors' justifications, the mechanisms of alignment or demarcation at play, and the processes of dismantling or decentralizing globalized power that the event hints at upon initial reading. The analysis will also examine the varied responses of nation-states, as the emergence of the Enhanced Games directly challenges national public policies: the positioning of national anti-doping agencies, criminal liability regarding doping, athletes' health protection, the recognition of performances, or the regulation of funding. A comparative study of these national reactions will capture contemporary reconfigurations of public policy in sports within a context of weakening multilateralism.
These data and approaches will be supplemented by an analysis of the economic dimensions of the event, particularly a detailed mapping of funders, sponsors, and investors. The sources of funding, the amounts committed, the support or opposition from sponsors, as well as the logic and mechanisms accompanying the infrastructure of the Enhanced Games, will serve as indicators of the scope and impact of both the event and its model.

Your Work Environment

The PhD student will be supervised by Julie Demeslay, Professor at Paris Nanterre University (UPN), sports sociologist, and researcher at the ISP (UMR 7220), and Valentin Guery, Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) at UPN, sports sociologist, and researcher at the ISP (UMR 7220).
The PhD student will be hosted within the Institute for Social Sciences of Politics (ISP - UMR 7220) at Paris Nanterre University (UPN). He or she will be provided with a workspace (including a computer) in one of the offices dedicated to PhD students, access to equipment available for loan within the laboratory (such as a digital recorder), and full access to the University Library and its databases, including free access to press archives. From a community perspective, they will join a network of 84 PhD students at the ISP, with opportunities to participate in and contribute to the organization of seminars. The student will also benefit from the methodological support of the ISP's two CNRS research and study engineers, who specialize in "Data production, processing, analysis, and fieldwork." Regarding financial guarantees, the ISP is rigorously managed and steered; consequently, the use of the state grant (Subvention d'État) will be monitored, and each research travel/mission undertaken by the PhD student will be strictly overseen and supported.

Constraints and risks

Fieldwork missions abroad, particularly to the United States, may be necessary for data collection.

Compensation and benefits

Compensation

2300 € gross monthly

Annual leave and RTT

44 jours

Remote Working practice and compensation

Pratique et indemnisation du TT

Transport

Prise en charge à 75% du coût et forfait mobilité durable jusqu’à 300€

About the offer

About the CNRS

The CNRS is a major player in fundamental research on a global scale. The CNRS is the only French organization active in all scientific fields. Its unique position as a multi-specialist allows it to bring together different disciplines to address the most important challenges of the contemporary world, in connection with the actors of change.

CNRS

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