Tourism Research Methods

Summer School 2022

Online July 4th-8th, 2022

The Summer School aims at offering a platform for PhD students, Post-docs and Researchers/Assistant Professors to engage with tourism research methods and tourism analytics as to enable them to acquire, perfect and refine their knowledge and expertise in designing and applying appropriate and novel research methods.


Visual Research Methods for Tourism

The first edition of the Tourism Research Methods Summer School will focus on Visual Research Methods for Tourism enabling participants to learn, improve and master visual qualitative and quantitative methods for research purposes. 

The Summer School also offers recommendations, strategies and tips on publishing when using novel, alternative or controversial research methods.


Scope of the 2022 Summer School

The 2022 edition of the Tourism Research Methods Summer School will focus on Visual Research Methods encompassing the following topic:

  • Visual Research Methods: from traditional to contemporary approaches
  • Instagramming tourism experiences: qualitative approaches
  • Innovative visual methodologies in event studies
  • Quantitative methods for visual data
  • Publishing visual research in tourism, leisure, and events


Speakers

Professor Maria Lexhagen,
Department of Economics, Geography, Law and Tourism, Mid Sweden University, Sweden


Short bio

Professor Maria Lexhagen obtained her Ph.D. from School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is a full professor at Mid Sweden University, Sweden where she is associated with a leading tourism research center, Etour. Her research is focused on marketing and digitalization in tourism and cuts across both business, management, and consumer behavior. Most of her published work is in the area of perceptions of value, customer-based destination branding, destination management, business intelligence in tourism, and popular culture tourism with a focus on fan travel and destination development. Other recent research projects include topics such as sustainable food choice in destinations and climate friendly solutions for destinations. While her interest in scientific method cover a wide range of designs, two of her on-going projects have an experimental research design focus.

You can visit her page at  Maria Lexhagen

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Dr Tijana Rakić Tourism,
School of Business and Law, Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research and Enterprise Group, University of Brighton, UK


Short bio 

Dr. Tijana Rakić is Principal Reader and leader of the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research and Enterprise Group and the Masters programmes in Tourism and Events at the University of Brighton. She is an internationally established 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; narratives of travel and tourism; and representations of places, cultures and identities in promotional materials and popular media. Tijana is currently the Chair of the Geographies of Tourism and Leisure Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, as well as the co-editor of the Routledge book series titled Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism. She is a regular reviewer for several leading journals she serves on the editorial board of leading scientific journals in the field of tourism, geography and leisure.

You can visit her page at  Tijana Rakić

Associate Professor Serena Volo,
Faculty of Economics and Management, Research Cluster on Tourism, Marketing and Regional Development, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy


Short bio

Prof. Dr. Serena Volo is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. She is member of the Research Cluster  on Tourism, Marketing and Regional Development and Vice-director of the Competence Centre in Tourism Management and Tourism Economics, TOMTE. She has chaired several editions of CBTS, the Consumer Behavior in Tourism Symposium. Her research interests include consumer behavior in tourism, experience and emotions in tourism, visual research methods and big data, innovation and competitiveness in tourism. She is an elected member of the Executive Council of IATE, the International Association for Tourism Economics. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Emerald international peer-reviewed journal Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality. She is also on the editorial board of leading scientific journals in the field of tourism, hospitality and leisure. She has had work, research and life experiences in Italy, Ireland, England, USA, France, Switzerland.

You can visit her Google Scholar page at Serena Volo

Researcher and Lecturer Joanne Yu,
Department of Tourism and Service Management, Modul University Vienna, Austria



Short bio

Joanne Yu is a Researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Tourism and Service Management of Modul University Vienna. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Tourism Event Management from Macao Institute for Tourism Studies and a Master of Arts in Innovation and Management in Tourism with distinction from Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. As a young scholar, Joanne has accumulated several years of experience in conducting scientific research. She has published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to a number of book chapters and conference papers/presentations.  Her research interests center on destination marketing, tourist/consumer experience, human-robot interaction, and social media analysis. Methodologically, Joanne also extends her knowledge in the field of eye tracking technology and visual programming. 

You can visit her Google Scholar page at  Joanne Yu


Guest Speaker


Lecturer Xavier Matteucci,
University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, Vienna Austria


Short bio

Xavier Matteucci teaches in the areas of cultural tourism, marketing and research methodologies. His research interests include tourism experiences, creative tourism, slow travel, well-being and qualitative methodologies such as art-based visual methods and grounded theory. Xavier’s work with visual materials has been published in high impact international journals such as Tourism Management and Tourism Analysis. Xavier serves as editorial board member for various international tourism journals, and he has led European Commission funded consultancy research projects on sustainable cultural tourism.

You can visit his Google page at Xavier Matteucci

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Research Associate Philipp Wegerer, 
Management Center Innsbruck, Austria



Short bio

Philipp K. Wegerer, PhD is a Research Associate at the MCI Tourism, Management Center Innsbruck. He has an interdisciplinary background in political science, organization studies, and marketing, and holds a PhD in Management from the University of Innsbruck. His current research focuses on how organizations interact with society. This includes dimensions such as visual communication, digitalization, consumer activism, and branding. His research is published in Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Organization, GJHRM, and IJRDM.



What you’ll learn

During the summer school, participants develop a conceptualization of visual research methods for tourism and will be able to link them to their research questions and settings. Participants will engage directly with the invited speakers and the different methods presented.

After successful completion of this course, participants are expected to be able to:

  • Identify the different theoretical approaches and paradigms used in visual research and connect them with their research interests, and rethinking the ways in which visuals can be used in tourism research
  • Understand the importance of alternative methods of data collection and analysis of visuals
  • Organize their own visual research data gathering, manage their visual datasets, analyze visual data with suitable methods
  • Critically reflect on the implications of using visual data and visual methods for their research projects
  • Develop a path for publishing visual research in tourism, leisure and events journals.


Program Overview

The Summer School will last five days, and the typical day structure is as follows:

Participants, upon request, will have the opportunity to schedule individual meetings with the convenor and speakers between 9:00 and 9:30 and after 16:00.


Organizing Committee 2022:

Serena Volo, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Maria Lexhagen, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Tijana Rakić, University of Brighton, UK
Joanne Yu, Modul University Vienna, Austria