The GLTRG committee seeks to promote tourism and leisure research through engaging stakeholders and driving progressive research agendas.
Dr Tijana Rakić, Chair
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 she is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Prior to being elected as the Chair or the GLTRG, Tijana has been a part of the GLTRG committee in a number of roles including ordinary committee member, secretary, and Interim Chair. She is currently also one of the co-editors of the group’s book series titled Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism (with J.-A. Lester).
Tijana is a Principal Lecturer (eq. Associate Professor) at the University of Brighton where she teaches on a range of Tourism and Events modules, leads the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research and Enterprise Group and Masters courses in Tourism and Events.
Dr Jen Hall, Treasurer
Dr Jen Hall is a tourism geographer interested in embodied experiences of extreme and adventure environments in terms of gender, emotion and affect, and more broadly in heritage, culture and sports. Her PhD Research concentrated on: Women mountaineers: A study of affect, sensoria and emotion. Prior to starting her PhD in 2015, she worked for 20 years as a cultural producer and curator in the arts and heritage sector, founding and leading major venues, festivals and cultural development programmes. Jen has also run her own business as a freelance producer and as well as directing major University public engagement, enterprise and knowledge exchange programmes.
Dr Jennifer Holland, Secretary
Jennifer recently completed her PhD at the University of Brighton (UK), which explored tourists’ perceptions of risk in ocean cruising, and won the Three Minute Thesis in 2018 for the University of Brighton. Jennifer has 14 years of tourism industry experience, including roles with Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, Fairmont, and Sheraton. Research interests include cruise tourism, risk, tourism marketing, consumer decision-making, arctic tourism, positionality & reflexivity and innovative qualitative data methods including image elicitation. Jennifer’s current role includes serving as a Research Consultant within tourism and cruise industry, and she is a Lecturer in Tourism at the University of Suffolk.
Dr Andrew Smith, Newsletter/Website Editor
Andrew Smith is a Reader in the School of Architecture + Cities at the University of Westminster. His background is in urban geography and he specialises in research on urban tourism and city events. Andrew’s current work focuses on public parks and the conflicts arising from their use as venues for commercial events. He is the author of two books: Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to Revitalise Cities (Routledge, 2012) and Events in the City: Using Public Spaces as Event Venues (Routledge 2016). He first attended the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in 2003 and has been a regular contributor ever since.
Dr Alberto Amore, Conference & Event Coordinator
Dr Alberto Amore is Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. He holds a PhD from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2017) and extensively researches on tourism planning, tourism policy, urban tourism, crisis and disaster management in tourism, destination governance and destination resilience. He is author of Tourism and Urban Regeneration (Routledge, 2019) and co-author of Tourism and Resilience (Channel View, 2017). He currently acts as the Social Media Editor for Current Issues in Tourism and as Associate Editor for Tourism Management Perspectives. He joined the GLTRG in 2019 and he is also Fellow for the Regional Studies Association (RSA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA).
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.
Katharina Bürger, Postgraduate Representative
Katharina Bürger is a part-time PhD student at the School of Business and Law, University of Brighton (UK), and an events industry professional, organising conferences and events for the Regional Studies Association (UK). Her main research interests surround the growing contestation of and resistance towards mega-events, in particular during the bidding stage of the Olympic Games. She also teaches part-time on BSc International Event Management (with and without Marketing) courses at the University of Brighton, combining industry knowledge with current research and research informed by her own PhD project.
Within the School of Business and Law, Katharina is an active member of the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research and Enterprise Group, and she has organised a panel event for the group in June 2021, on the topic of opportunities and challenges for Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research in times of global immobility.
Dr Jaeyeon Choe
Dr. Jaeyeon Choe is a Senior Academic at Bournemouth University, UK. She obtained her PhD in Tourism Management with a minor in Cultural Anthropology from The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research areas evolve around wellness/spiritual tourism in Southeast Asia, sustainable development and poverty alleviation, and migration. She is currently leading projects on wellness/spiritual tourism and sustainable community development in Indonesia and Thailand. As an international educator, she has been invited as a visiting scholar to Canada, Finland, Indonesia, Germany, Thailand and Vietnam. She serves as an associate editor for the e-Review of Tourism Journal and an editorial board for the International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage. She co-founded the Refugee and Migrant Leisure Network with community organisations and local councils in Southern England. She also serves in the Mekong Tourism Advisory Group, working with small medium-sized enterprises in a tourism sector.
Cristina Alexandra Trifan, Postgraduate Representative
Cristina Alexandra Trifan is a Doctoral Researcher and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, United Kingdom. Alexandra is undertaking a research project on the role and meaning of happiness in volunteer tourism in Fiji. Prior to her PhD, Alexandra has graduated with a Master of Arts in Tourism Management from the University of Westminster and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Hospitality Management from the University College of Northern Denmark. Her research interests sit at the intersection of tourism, cultural anthropology, development studies, happiness studies and Small Island Developing States. Alexandra is also a Postgraduate Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society with (IBG).