What travel makes us feel, and why those feelings matter.
Pioneering research by Prof. Dorina-Maria Buda, from Jordan, Israel and Palestine to eastern Europe, tracing how emotions move between tourists, local people and places in times of conflict, and how understanding them can support dialogue, justice and, ultimately, peace.
The concept
Affective Tourism is a concept proposed by Dorina-Maria Buda in her book of the same title: the ways in which affects, emotions and feelings are accessed, felt, experienced and performed in encounters between touring bodies and places.
Drawing on emotional and psychoanalytic geographies, the work asks how tourists are moved by, and move through, places of turmoil, and how those encounters can contribute to understanding, negotiation and peace.
“In-depth understandings of the role of emotions in such places can contribute to conflict negotiation and peace building.”

Fieldwork in the West Bank: tourism at the separation wall.
Research
Ethnographic research across destinations in ongoing socio-political conflict: North Korea, Iran, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian West Bank and eastern Europe.

How tourism exists in spite of ongoing conflict, and how affective and emotional experiences shape the identity of conflict places.
Watch the video →Latest article: haptic tourism at the Separation Wall →
Travel to places of atrocity, death and disaster, theorised through cultural theories of affect and emotion together with psychoanalysis.
Research on ‘dark tourism’ and emotions gets a boost →
Contributing to social policy that promotes inclusive societies valuing peace and wellbeing, and that accepts diversity and difference.
Watch the Museums for Peace films →
About
Professor of Tourism and Hospitality at Edge Hotel School and Dean Research for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Essex. A TEDx speaker, her work examines the interconnections between affect, emotion and psychoanalysis in the geographies of tourism.
Publications
Latest & ongoing
Student fieldwork in Jordan and the Netherlands, doctoral supervision, museums for peace, media interviews and outreach. For current activity and reflections, follow along on LinkedIn.