The GLTRG committee seeks to promote tourism and leisure research through engaging stakeholders and driving progressive research agendas.

November 2026 – Check out the new GLTRG committee members!

NEW Committee members were voted in at the GLTRG AGM held at the 2026 Royal Geographical Society with IBG International Conference in London, in a hybrid format, on September 2nd, 1310hrs (GMT), Drayton Rm, Hybrid 4. 

Chair – Alberto Amore

Events Coordinator – Tijana Rakić

Treasurer – Gelin Wang

Postgraduate Representatives – Yuanjing Jiang and Leo Bentley

***Welcome to our new committee members and congratulations to Alberto and Tijana on their new roles!***

Dr Alberto Amore, Chair

Alberto Amore, PhD is Assistant Professor in Geography of the Anthropocene in the Geography Research Unit at the University of Oulu, Finland. He is one of thematic leaders for Biodiverse Anthropocene (ANTS) and affiliated scholar Frontiers in Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) and the Sustainable Tourism Geographies (STGs) research group. 

His research interests include tourism and public policy, governance and metagovernance of destinations, destination resilience, spatial planning, urban regeneration, regenerative tourism, tourism crises and natural hazards and tourism and climate change. He has written more than 100 outputs on different topics in prominent tourism journals, including Annals of Tourism Research and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism. He is currently Associate Editor for Tourism Management Perspectives and Editorial Board member for Tourism Geographies and Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism. He has been a member of the GLTRG Committee since 2020 and also served as Events Coordinator.




Dr Jen Hall, Secretary

Dr Jenny Hall is an Associate Professor in Tourism and Events at York St John University, she is a cultural geographer specialising in the geographies of tourism, leisure, sport, and heritage. Her work is interdisciplinary and focuses on issues of social and ecological justice.  Jenny has published widely on the intersectional experiences of inequality in adventure, which has influenced policy in mountaineering organisations in the United Kingdom. Recent publications include edited books ‘Gender, Politics and Change in Mountaineering: Moving Mountains‘,  ‘The Mountain and the Politics of Representation‘  and a chapter in ‘Other Everests: One Mountain Many Worlds‘. Jenny is currently working with Mountain Rescue England and Wales to understand women’s experiences of mountain rescue and to create a practical toolkit to enable rescue teams to improve equality, diversity, and inclusion. 

As an expert in governance and policy in tourism concerning urban heritage, spatial justice, and regenerative tourism, Jenny is currently working with North York Moors National Park on a five-year research project to investigate climate crisis and conservation through public engagement programmes.  Jenny is a Fellow of and Secretary of The Geographies of Leisure and Tourism Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society,  and a member of the Other Everests AHRC Research Network. Jenny has professional experience managing cultural regeneration projects in the public sector establishing and leading major venues, festivals, and cultural development programmes. I am a passionate mountaineer and a member of her local mountain rescue team.

You can follow her at @laughinggrouse / www.jennyhallgeographer.com / LinkedIn

Dr Tijana Rakić, Events Coordinator

Dr Tijana Rakić is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research projects, publications and interests predominantly lie within the themes of visual research methods; world heritage, tourism and national identity; tourism, leisure and art; and representations of places, cultures and identities in promotional materials and popular media. Her research is informed by both cultural geography and visual anthropology and in addition to being a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she is also a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute. 

Tijana served two terms as Chair of GLTRG (2020-2026) and was a member of the GLTRG committee in a number of roles including ordinary committee member, secretary, and Interim Chair. She is currently also the editor of the group’s book series titled Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism.

Tijana is an Associate Professor in Tourism and Cultural Studies at De Montfort University where she also leads the Humanities and Cultural Management Subject Group. 

Gelin Wang, Treasurer

Gelin Wang is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at Durham University. Her research examines how heritage, tourism and lifestyle destination-making reshape residents’ plural relations to place in Shaxi, Yunnan, southwest China. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, she explores how different relations become consequential in particular situations, how residents interpret and evaluate local transformation, whose concerns and knowledge receive recognition, and how unequal resources and alternatives shape their room to manoeuvre. Her wider interests include cultural, tourism and heritage geographies, relations to place, recognition and inequality, and ethnographic and qualitative methods.

Dr Fiona Eva Bakas, Communications

Fiona Eva Bakas, PhD, is a critical tourism researcher and lecturer with international teaching experience. Fiona is a collaborating researcher in the CREATOUR Creative Tourism Observatory, Visiting Research Fellow at the Center of Excellence in Food, Tourism & Leisure- Deree, The American College of Greece and associate member of NGO Equality in Tourism. Her research interests focus on creative tourism, gender in tourism labour, community-led festivals, tourism in marginalized areas and mountains, female entrepreneurship, qualitative methods, participatory action methods, and innovative educational technologies. Fiona holds a PhD in Tourism (Otago University, New Zealand), has 20 years of varied work experience (corporate and academic), and is currently an assistant tourism professor at the Institute of Geography and Territorial Planning, University of Lisbon, Portugal.


Dr Anna de Jong, Awards & Prizes Coordinator

Anna de Jong is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism at the University of Glasgow. Prior to joining Glasgow, she held a Lectureship at the University of Surrey and a Postdoctoral position at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Anna is an interdisciplinary social scientist, with a background in human geography and tourism management. Her research takes focus with the relationships between tourism and place, guided by wider concerns of inequality and accessibility.



Yuanjing Jiang and Leo Bentley, Postgraduate Representatives

                                                                                                  

Yuanjing Jiang is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at Durham University. Her research asks how gendered place-making shapes the stories through which rural places are understood. Specifically, she examines how gendered labour becomes visible or remains obscured, how visibility relates to cultural authority, and how in-migration reshapes these relations and the social hierarchies through which they are organised in tourism economies in Dali, Southwest China. Her earlier training in landscape architecture and rural research in China shaped a long-standing interest in rural transformation, which her doctoral research develops through a geographical perspective. More broadly, she is interested in the social consequences of mobility and changing cultural economies in rural China.


Leo Bentley is a PhD Candidate in Tourism Management at James Cook University, Australia. His doctoral research explores story-based tourism experiences as a mechanism for enhancing community participation and empowerment. He holds an MBA in Tourism Management from Chang’an University, China; an Executive MSc in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Asia e University; a BBA (Hons) from Lincoln University College, Malaysia; and a double degree in Psychology and Counselling from Cambodia and Central America. At JCU, Leo serves as an HDR Ambassador, International Student Ambassador and Library Experience Assistant. His research interests include storytelling, community empowerment, sustainable tourism, and meaningful tourism experiences.