Research area 1: Tourism as a key for understanding social and economic permanence and transformation
This area of research looks into the different approaches to tourism practices, the underlying reasons for permanence and continuity or, on the contrary, for transformation and reshaping of societies. Changes in territories, employment, management and career paths, and amendments to regulations on tourism policies, locally as well as internationally, are some of the topics that can enrich the debate on the role of Tourism in the rationales behind the reproduction/transformation of spaces and societies. Through a critical approach to these issues, Research area 1 will stimulate theoretical reflections on the links between tourism and global changes (climate change; wider mobilities; digital revolution; political, socio-economic or managerial change). This will include highlighting the contribution of tourism studies to understanding the so-called “emergence” or “transition” phenomena, which are at the heart of debates in many disciplinary fields.
Research area 2: Think of tourism to think of inequalities, injustices and conflicts
This entails studying the differentiated “distribution” of tourism-related phenomena, tourist-sending and receiving countries, in terms of their continuity and their disruption, by combining different approaches - sociological, geographical, historical, economic, ecological, financial, legal and managerial. Entry points may be individuals and social groups (participants and non-participants), businesses (in terms of employment and work), products and markets, accommodation, means of transport, NICT, space usage, territories, sporting or cultural activities, timeframes, landscapes, etc. Insofar as tourism is a prism for observing social dynamics, the study of tourism-related divides is also a primary entry point for analysing social divides, socio-political tensions, competing forces such as conflicts, of which the tourism-related phenomenon can be the core issue, as well as the result or the illustration.
Research area 3: Inventing and re-inventing tourism
The research area “Inventing and Re-inventing tourism” proposes to question the models, processes and tools through which industry operators and territorial authorities can imagine and promote competitive offerings while drastically changing the organisational forms capable of producing them. Identifying or developing the analytical frameworks to be able to describe and understand the principles of invention and innovation becomes, as in other areas, a core question for businesses and public authorities and more broadly, for all tourism stakeholders.
In this context, research area 3 proposes to support multi-disciplinary teams whose work will contribute to enriching and fine-tuning the models that will enable a better understanding of the invention, but also, from a business perspective, of how industry operators can make these models their own.
To download the detailed scientific project : click here