The conference planning team is thrilled to announce a dynamic and stimulating series of keynote presentations.
- Dr. Julia Harrison
- Dr. Nigel Morgan
- Dr. Ana María Munar
- Dr. Tomas Pernecky
- Dr. Annette Pritchard
- Early career keynote panel
Dr. Julia Harrison
Well-being at the Canadian Cottage: An early feminist story
Drawing on my ethnographic research with cottagers in the Haliburton region of Ontario on the ‘meaningfulness’ of the Canadian cottage experience, my remarks will reflect on: what is a cottage? what is understood to be the ‘Canadian’ cottage? what does well-being mean in relation to this second-home tourism experience? I will use this broader context to reflect on aspects of my current research that explores the stories of a group of women who beginning in the 1940s gathered annually over nearly forty years at a cottage property in the Haliburton region of Ontario. What did this experience mean to these women? Who were they and what does their experience as politically-engaged professionals, intellectuals and artists who relished their collective isolation while at ‘the cottage’ suggest about ideas of wellness, fulfillment and freedom of expression? What tensions do such understandings presume about their experience? What does their experience offer any reflection on the relationship between tourism and wellness?
Speaker biography
Julia Harrison, DPhil (Oxon) is Professor Emeritus in Anthropology, Trent University where she taught for twenty years, retiring June 30, 2014. Prior to joining the academy she had a twenty year career as a museum curator in Canada and Australia. At Trent she taught and conducted research on issues of representation in museums and other institutionalized displays of culture, on the nature of the tourist interaction and experience, and most recently on the Ontario cottage experience. Her book Being a Tourist (UBC Press) was published in 2003; in 2006 she edited (with Regna Darnell) a volume called Historicizing Canadian Anthropology (UBC Press). Julia has published in a range of museum, tourism and anthropology journals including a 2008 guest edited special issue (w. Sue Frohlick) of Tourist Studies, called Engaging Ethnography in Tourist Research. In 2013 she published A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage (UBC Press). Her current research continues to focus on the cottage experience in Ontario.
Dr. Nigel Morgan
Promise and prospects of Critical Tourism Studies (North America)
Together with Professor Pritchard, Professor Morgan will open the conference by speaking personally about the very beginning stages of the development of the Critical Tourism Studies network. They will talk about what they and their colleagues felt was a need to create a space where scholars (and in particular graduate students) would feel supported in their efforts to inject tourism scholarship with a deeper concern about issues of social justice. Drawing on his early interests in issues of inequality as manifested in tourism branding and marketing, Professor Morgan will offer deep insights into the ways his approach was encouraged and resisted by the academy. Together, Professors Morgan and Pritchard will put forward their thoughts on the future of critical tourism scholarship in North America and beyond.
Speaker biography
Nigel Morgan is Chair of Tourism and Events Marketing at the University of Surrey's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. He is a founding member of the original Critical Tourism Studies network and has been a principal organizer of the Critical Tourism Studies conference series, which has been held in Europe and the United Kingdom since its inception in 2005. Professor Morgan’s work on issues of gender, power, and social justice in tourism has influenced scholars around the world and we are deeply honoured that he has agreed to speak at the opening session of our conference.
Dr. Ana María Munar
Postdisciplinarity and academic wellbeing
Dr. Munar will co-present with Dr. Pernecky to address the central question “How does our way of producing, evaluating, and sharing knowledge impact our wellbeing as academics?” They will first introduce an existentialist/narrative approach to the notion of “being an academic” and look critically at the idea of being well (wellbeing) in our contemporary tourism academy. To better understand the crafting of academic identities, they will outline a number of issues, including the notions of “artistic integrity” and the “internalization of otherness.” Drs. Munar and Pernecky will then relate the concept of wellbeing to the traditional ethical question of being good (goodbeing), drawing upon a series of authors such as Habermas, Bauman, and Arendt, as well as on a recent analysis that examines the consequences of managerialism, bureaucratization, and neoliberalism in higher education. This will then lead to a deeper, critical examination of wellbeing and freedom by embracing the philosophical legacy of Deleuze and Guattari. By waving these threads together, they will present postdisciplinarity as epistemic and ethical movement based on principles of dissent, dialogue, and autonomy, but also in terms of disobedient thinking, scholarly creativity, and academic freedom.
Speaker biography
Ana is Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research interests are in digital technologies, epistemology, higher education and gender. Grounded in critical scholarship, Ana's work on digital technologies establishes the foundations for the advancement of Critical Digital Tourism Studies while her papers on education examine the impact of global and regional policies in tourism education. Her latest publications focus on postdisciplinarity in knowledge production, research paradigms, novel approaches to integrate the field of digital technologies in the curriculum and gender equality in the tourism academy. She coordinates the action-based research project, “While Waiting for the Dawn,” which seeks to bring about change by empowering tourism women academics. A highly engaged scholar, Ana has occupied a series of recent and past positions in academic bodies. At her present university she holds board membership positions at the Diversity and Inclusion Council, the Association of Faculty Staff and the board of tutors for the Assistant Professors Pedagogical Programme. She is member of the Executive Committee of the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI), where she coordinates the Advocacy area, and board member of the annual International Seminar on Innovation and Tourism (INTO). Ana is also administrator of the online community "Women Academics in Tourism", a web platform founded by Dr. Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore to enhance awareness on gender related topics. She is the coordinator for Tourism and Hospitality of the B.Sc of Service Management and Business Administration at Copenhagen Business School and has extensive experience in curriculum and programme development.
Dr. Tomas Pernecky
Postdisciplinarity and academic wellbeing
Dr. Pernecky will co-present with Dr. Munar to address the central question “How does our way of producing, evaluating, and sharing knowledge impact our wellbeing as academics?” They will first introduce an existentialist/narrative approach to the notion of “being an academic” and look critically at the idea of being well (wellbeing) in our contemporary tourism academy. To better understand the crafting of academic identities, they will outline a number of issues, including the notions of “artistic integrity” and the “internalization of otherness.” Drs. Pernecky and Munar will then relate the concept of wellbeing to the traditional ethical question of being good (goodbeing), drawing upon a series of authors such as Habermas, Bauman, and Arendt, as well as on a recent analysis that examines the consequences of managerialism, bureaucratization, and neoliberalism in higher education. This will then lead to a deeper, critical examination of wellbeing and freedom by embracing the philosophical legacy of Deleuze and Guattari. By waving these threads together, they will present postdisciplinarity as epistemic and ethical movement based on principles of dissent, dialogue, and autonomy, but also in terms of disobedient thinking, scholarly creativity, and academic freedom.
Speaker biography
Tomas Pernecky is with the Faculty of Culture and Society at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. An advocate of postdisciplinary approaches to knowledge, his wide-ranging interests extend to the fields of tourism and events studies, which he employs as contexts for examining a variety of philosophical, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues. Examples include ontological inquiry into the constitution of social worlds through the phenomenon of events (e.g., Ideological, Social and Cultural Aspects of Events by CABI), the epistemologies and methodologies in event studies (e.g., Approaches and Methods in Event Studies by Routledge), and the application of constructionist philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology in tourism research (i.e., Constructionism: Critical Pointers to Tourism Studies and Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Tourism Studies published in Annals of Tourism Research). Tomas has just completed a work on Epistemology and Metaphysics in Qualitative Research for SAGE Publications—a text intended for social science researchers and qualitatively-inclined scholars. Together with Ana M. Munar he co-chaired the 2nd Tourism Postdisciplinary Conference in Copenhagen, and co-edited a special issue on tourism postdisciplinarity for Tourism Analysis. Tomas is currently leading the development of a new core course titled ‘Knowledge and Inquiry’, which will be offered across all schools within the Faculty of Culture and Society at AUT. This project brings together a team of academics from Te Ara Poutama (Faulty of Maori and Indigenous Development) and the Faculty of Culture and Society—comprising the Schools of Education, Hospitality and Tourism, Language and Culture, and Social Sciences and Public Policy.
Dr. Annette Pritchard
Promise and prospects of Critical Tourism Studies (North America)
Together with Professor Morgan, Professor Pritchard will open the conference by speaking personally about the intentions underpinning the development of the Critical Tourism Studies network. Drawing on her particular research interests regarding the interplay of tourism, representation, and identities within the broader context of social justice, Professor Pritchard will share her personal experiences with trying to find (and later to create) an intellectual culture that supports and nurtures critical tourism inquiry. As a founding member of the Critical Tourism Studies Network, Professor Pritchard’s words will be inspiring to our predominantly North American audience and in particular to graduate students. Together, Professors Morgan and Pritchard will provide a stimulating and provocative beginning to our conference.
Speaker biography
Annette Pritchard is Director of Cardiff Metropolitan University's Welsh Centre for Tourism Research and Professor of Tourism in the Cardifff School of Management. She is a founding member of the Critical Tourism Studies network and has worked alongside colleagues to host the series of Critical Tourism Studies conferences, which began in 2005 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Professor Pritchard’s ground-breaking work on issues of gender and social justice in tourism has led the way for a new generation of critical tourism scholars. We are deeply honoured that Professor Pritchard has agreed to present with Professor Morgan and to open our conference.
Early career keynote panel
As academics, we sometimes work within a world separate from the businesses, organizations, and communities that surround us. Teaching and engagement can appear take a back seat to scholarship. The CTSNA Early Career Keynote Panel will invite emerging scholars and graduate students to reflect on their professional and academic paths to explain their current outlook on tourism research and how they fit into the larger academy and world. In so doing, panellists will explain how they arrived at their current research agenda, teaching philosophy (if applicable) and engagement philosophy, sharing the ‘twists and turns’ of their journey through scholarship and practice and what this might mean in relation to travel for the good of all. The forum thus aims to profile panellists’ developing research portfolios and to create spaces that support early career scholars to take leading roles in mobilizing and disseminating knowledge within an international network.
Speaker biographies
Christina Cavaliere
Christina Cavaliere is an environmental social scientist and sustainable development expert. Her research examines the social construction of climate change and includes investigation into new economics, sustainable tourism and post-carbon livelihood strategies. Cavaliere has ten years of international project management, research, policy and training programme design experience in sustainable consumption and production with a technical background in projects involving climate change, bio-cultural conservation, agriculture, supply-chain management, capacity building and environmental policy. She has collaborated on international projects in over 30 countries with partners such as United Nations Environment Program and the European Commission. As one of our early career panelists, Cavaliere brings a robust background in sustainable tourism and both professional and academic experiences in a variety of international settings. Through this lens, she will highlight the milestones that have shaped her current worldview the research questions she is currently examining.
Dr. KangJae Jerry Lee
Dr. KangJae Jerry Lee is an emerging scholar in the field of leisure and tourism studies. His scholarly accomplishments have been recognized widely, and include awards and accolades such as the 2013 U.S. Senator Phil Gramm Doctoral Fellowship and 2012 Diversity Scholarship from National Recreation and Park Association. His primary research interest is social inequality and racial discrimination in leisure and tourism contexts. His research focus closely aligns with the aim of the CTSNA conference in so far as it seeks to create positive social change in and through tourism scholarship, education, and practice.
Laura Elizabeth Aguilar-Méndez
Laura Elizabeth Aguilar-Méndez is a second year Master of Arts candidate in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her interest in the phenomenon of second homes has motivated her to explore topics on mobility and migration, and their relationship to social capital in an international context. Hailing from Mexico, Laura has accumulated both academic achievement and professional experience. Prior to pursuing graduate work in Canada, Laura worked several years in the hotel, hospitality, and entertainment park industries.
Allison Holmes
Allison Holmes is a graduate of the Masters in Tourism Policy and Planning at the University of Waterloo. For her MA thesis, Allison collaborated with representatives of the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories to explore Denesoline stories about experiences of, and expectations for, respectful visitor behaviour in their vast ancestral territory. Allison's research involved mobilizing knowledge communicated through personal narratives into a community-based code of conduct for visitors, a tool that Lutsel K'e representatives expect to use in land management associated with a new National Park. Allison is now pursuing a PhD in Geography at the University of Ottawa, and working on a climate change and economic development study in the Canadian Arctic. Allison's Aboriginal research experience, commitment to responsible development, and critically conscious engagement with tourism as a force of global change will be important points for dialogue and reflection during the early career panel.
