Dr Raoul Valerio Bianchi
University of East London
Tuesday October 2, 2018
12:30 to 1:30
The political economy of tourism development and sustainability
Sustainable tourism has been a long-standing yet consistently ill-defined area of tourism scholarship as well as a predominant concern of the UNWTO. In this discussion Raoul will provide a brief reflection on the contribution of political economy to tourism scholarship with particular emphasis on the unique challenges posed by tourism’s complex ‘industrial’ characteristics for research and advocacy on environmentally sustainable and socially just tourism development.
Dr Raoul Bianchi gained a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southampton and an MSc in Tourism Management from the University of Surrey before being awarded a Doctorate in the social anthropology of tourism development at University of North London in 2000.
He worked as a Lecturer in Tourism at the University of Derby from 1995 to 1998 before returning to University of North London (subsequently London Metropolitan University) to take up a position as Research Fellow and then Senior Research Fellow in Culture, Tourism and Development. During his time he developed and carried out a range of funded research projects into tourism development, sustainable tourism planning, World Heritage and the cultural politics of heritage, principally in the Canary Islands. He has also worked on EU-funded programmes including EU-TEMPUS and was part of the coordinating team for the Euromed Heritage II project, Mediterranean Voices (http://www.med-voices.org), which explores urban intangible heritage in 13 Mediterranean cities.
