Travel as education

Connecting students, teaching and learning with society at large — through fieldwork, academic blogging and critical reflection on the cultures of travel.

Innovative method

Student academic blogging

For the Honours College course Passions of Tourism, I introduced student academic blogging as a novel method of learning and assessment. Each student keeps a blog of at least ten 300-word entries, using tourism theory to explain the socio-cultural, spatial and political aspects they encounter during their summer-school 'travel as education' experience.

Students advertise their blogs to reach as many followers as possible, engaging a wider audience and disseminating their theoretically-informed insights. To connect this work with society, I ran a Facebook contest — Most Read Blog & Wittiest Comment — increasing the societal impact of the teaching and the knowledge co-created among students, lecturer and readers.

Fieldwork with students

From the Groninger Museum to the deserts of Jordan

Cohorts examined museum shows such as David Bowie Is at the Groninger Museum, and travelled to Jordan to design travel brochures and films reflecting critically on 'travel as education'. The student work reached well beyond the classroom:

featured in regional mass media and on social media;
winner of the Honours College Petrus Camper Festival;
covered by Dagblad van het Noorden, the main newspaper of the northern Netherlands;
commercialised by students, with proceeds donated to a non-governmental organisation supporting refugees in Jordan.

Doctoral training

Supervision & examination

Supervision (a selection)

PhD — Post-conflict tourism in Northern Ireland. Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University (2020–2023).
DBA — Consumer Transformation: brand success and societal wellbeing. Nottingham Business School (2020–2023).
PhD — The complexities of 'non-rational' affective decision-making. Nottingham Business School (2017–2021).
PhD — Tourism in the Death Zone: emotions in high-altitude mountaineering in Pakistan and Nepal. Leeds Beckett University (2018–2020).
PhD — Leisure-led Regional Development: a complexity perspective on Fryslân. University of Groningen (2014–2022).
PhD — 'Nuclear Tourism' in Fukushima. University of Groningen (2014–2017).
Postdoctoral Research Fellows ×2, Leeds Beckett University (2018–2020); Research Fellow, Nottingham Trent University (2021–2023).

External examination (a selection)

Staging, Experiences and Outcomes in Dark Tourism Settings. University of Strathclyde (2020).
Kurdistan Today: A Study of Perceived Legitimacy. University of Bedfordshire (2019).
Place branding in strategic spatial planning. University of Groningen (2016).
Framing poverty: institutional entrepreneurship and tourism. University of Groningen & Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia (2015).

From the field

Ethnographic fieldwork

The field sites that underpin the research and teaching — photo collections from years of ethnographic work across the Middle East and Europe.

Jerusalem Old City Bethlehem & Hebron West Bank & Greater Jerusalem Petra & Wadi Rum Madaba, Mt Nebo & the Baptism Site Jordan Desert Castles Aqaba Umm Qais Westerbork Transit Camp, NL