Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
We conduct rigorous research that matters. That means exploring new ideas, and listening to different perspectives. It means questioning established thinking, and challenging old ways of working.
We value innovative interdisciplinary research and encourage international research partnerships. The importance of rigour inflects our research culture.
We host an ‘open’ research seminar series each year covering recent advances within the field. We have attracted speakers from universities across the globe to debate issues which affect the events, tourism and hospitality sector.
Dr. Barbara Neuhofer is a globally recognised thought leader in Experience Design, Professor at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria, and visiting professor at several European universities.
This talk takes you deep inside the participant’s mind to uncover the psychological and emotional forces that turn ordinary moments into extraordinary, life-changing experiences. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology and research on transformative experiences, it explores how awe, meaning, connection, and personal growth influence how people engage with events, destinations, and the world around them. In a world defined by uncertainty, digital acceleration, and societal change, people no longer seek only entertainment or escape. They seek depth, purpose, and transformation.
Dr Trudie Walters is a Senior Lecturer at Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki/Lincoln University in Aotearoa New Zealand.
In this presentation, she discusses how the media have represented an Indigenous event in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and uses this as a reflexive provocation, asking what we can learn about ourselves and our field of study.
Adopting transgression as an analytical lens, grounded in the ideas and practices of ‘boundary crossing’, and drawing on data collected primarily at the Whitby Goth Festival, North East England, this session proposes a framework of transgressive consumption mediated by and enabled through, 'spaces of transgression'.
Central to the analysis are transgressive bodies and transgressive practices. Professor Christina Goulding discusses how ‘reordering’ techniques, often in the form of violence, are employed when the doxa of normality is challenged through the crossing of boundaries between the mainstream and those deemed transgressive.
In this seminar Dr Shinde offers insights on the contemporary phenomena of religious tourism in the developing world. Based on studies of several pilgrim-towns and pilgrimage landscapes related to Hinduism in India, he demonstrates that different aspects of “religion” and active religious practice around divinity and deities, belief in sacred geography, faith-based rituals, devotion, rites of passage, as mediated by different kinds of religious functionaries continue to dominate present mobilities in religious tourism.
Dr Minwoo Lee talks through corporate digital responsibility and how it can create sustainable competitive advantage within hospitality and tourism.
Digital Transformation is the use of digital data and technologies to create new – or modify existing – business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. To gain sustainable competitive advantage and enhance business performance, hospitality and tourism management should take a long-term perspective on Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). This seminar introduces CDR and discusses its conceptualization and industry practices in the era of digital transformation. Future research ideas and research opportunities in this area are suggested.
Space tourism has always seemed to be the next 'big thing'. However, the success of Virgin Galactic and growing interest of 'Dark Sky' tourism has focused research attention on space tourism from the Earth and in flight.
On 25 September 2024, Professor Michael C Hall, Professor Ahurei in Marketing and Tourism in the Department of Management, Marketing and Tourism in the Business School at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand presented his research seminar, looking at the three main forms of space tourism: on Earth (Dark Sky tourism, heritage, launch sites), sub-orbital, and orbital (and beyond) with a focus on the long-term issues of regulation, space heritage, biosecurity and sustainability.
Please note, there is no video recording for this seminar.
Professor David Fennell from Brock University, Canada, explores why we create negative impacts in tourism, identifies "fails" of animal concern in tourism practice, and argues why animal welfare literacy can be a way forward out of this darkness.
Dr Monterrubio discusses the experiences of gender dissidents within Mexico, exposing the challenges faced by these individuals in accessing and engaging in tourism and leisure activities. The seminar also explains the difficulties encountered during the research process and proposes avenues for future research to address the vulnerability of gender dissident individuals.
