research seminars

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.

Professor Timothy Lee from the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality at Macau University of Science & Technology and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, Australia, discusses the rapidly expanding food tourism industry. He focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities in this growth sector within Asia.

Professor Marcel Bastiaansen (Tilburg and Breda Universities, Netherlands) presents an overview of methodological tools for measuring experiences. Experiences are the essence of leisure and tourism and it is emotions that are key to making experiences memorable. Marcel explains how to combine (neuro)physiological measures such as heart rate and skin conductance with self-reports of experience reconstruction to better understand memorable moments.

Dr Mahalia Jackman discusses her work which explores whether laws that discriminate against women influence gender pay gaps in tourism. Her empirical evidence suggests that laws supporting women’s decision to work, equal pay and women’s employment after having children are imperative for closing gender wage gaps in tourism.

Professor Huong T Bui, from the Asia Pacific University (APU), Japan, explains her recent work exploring how fishing communities have adopted tourism as a post-disaster recovery strategy following the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

Dr Bernadette Quinn draws on empirical research carried out in small-medium sized festivals in Dublin to try to better understand the relationship between festivals and inclusion. She discusses how festivals might better be utilised to foster inclusivity.

Dr Mike Duignan raises concerns that are often overlooked or deliberately ignored in this discussion of human rights challenges and mega-events. Mike reflects on a decade of Olympic and FIFA World Cup host destinations illustrating how  exploitative events can be on vulnerable citizens.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the shift of leisure experiences from physical to digital environments. What effect does this have on our experience of leisure events? Greg Richards' presentation looks at the theory and practice of leisure experiences in events, and speculates on the likely implications of growing digitalisation of events for audiences and organisers.

Dr Ogechi Adeola (Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria) presents her findings from a funded study on women's entrepreneurial journey in the tourism sectors of Nigeria and Ghana. 

Professor Andrew Smith (University of Westminster, UK) continues his work looking at the relationship between events and urban design / public spaces, by examining how music festivals can work with London's city parks. 

Dr Chris Chen (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) takes us on a journey through the development and differing perspectives of place attachment. Chris then explores the role of place attachment in predicting place-related behaviours, drawing upon several empirical studies.

Dr Serena Volo (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano,Italy) discusses the need for a better understanding and usage of photographs in tourism research. She advocates for rigorous visual analysis of big data images and discusses different research approaches, with examples from the analysis of visual social networks.

You can view previous Research Seminar Series videos via the Youtube playlist.