Program, Sessions, Speakers TRM Summer School 2026
Program Overview and Topics
The 2026 TRM Summer School will take place online from the 27th to the 30th of July 2026.
The Summer School will last four days. Below, the Program overview:
Participants, upon prior request, will have the opportunity to schedule individual meetings with the convenor and speakers between 12.00 to 12.30 and after 17:00. Further instructions will be provided on the first day. NOTE: Should there be a need to schedule individual meetings at different hours, this will be at the discrection of each speaker and based on time zone differences.
The 2026 edition will focus on the following topics:
– Visual Research Methods: from traditional to contemporary approaches
– Analysis of drawings in destination image research
– Photo-elicitation in tourism and event research
– Using visual data in grounded theory research
– Instagramming tourism experiences: qualitative approaches and AI
– Innovative visual methodologies in tourism, events and leisure studies: an insight into academic filmmaking
-Elicitation and Digital Glasses in Practice: An Interactive Methods Session
– Tourism related visual and meta-data analysis of “good places” on Instagram
– Quantitative AI-based methods for visual data analysis
– “Publishing with Visuals”: tips, insights and issues
– Topical issues in Visual Research
The program is subject to change and should not be treated as final until notified otherwise. The times indicated are in Central European Summer Time (CEST).
Sessions
The 2026 Summer School will comprise online live sessions, themed tracks and panel discussions.
Speakers
Full 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 a Full 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
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
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
Lecturer Tijana Rakić,
Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Short bio
Dr. Tijana Rakić is Associate Professor and Tourism and Hospitality Subject Lead at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. 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; travel, tourism 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 and she is also a member of the editorial boards of five journals in the field of tourism studies.
You can visit her page at Tijana Rakić
Assistant Professor Joanne Yu,
Faculty of International Tourism and Management, City University of Macau, Macau
Short bio
Professor Joanne Yu’s research interests focus on digital marketing and communication, consumer experience, human-robot interaction, and visual data analysis. She has also expanded her methodological expertise to include eye-tracking technology, machine learning, and natural language processing. Joanne is passionate about imparting knowledge and creating value for the next generation.
You can visit her page at Joanne Yu
Guest Speakers
Dr Jonathan Skinner,
University of Surrey, United Kingdom
Short bio
Dr Jonathan Skinner is an anthropologist working as an interdisciplinary researcher. He is recognised for his research on interviewing, the application of wearable digital glasses and immersive technologies to professional practice, and the development of innovative approaches to interviewing, training, and decision-making. He is the editor of The Interview: An Ethnographic Approach (Routledge), a widely used volume examining interviewing theory, methods, and practice across the social sciences. His wider research explores conflicted heritage, tourism and guiding, stress regulation and social dancing. Dr Skinner has published extensively, serves as a peer reviewer for funding councils and leading international journals, and actively supports interdisciplinary research, research leadership, and knowledge exchange between academia, industry, and the public sector.
You can visit his page at Jonathan Skinner
Dr Christina Bonarou,
University of the Aegean, Greece
Short bio
Dr Christina Bonarou holds a PhD in Communication, Visual Culture, and Tourism from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. Alongside her academic work, she is a Senior Project Manager for European Union-funded projects, with extensive experience in designing, coordinating, and implementing initiatives in the fields of tourism, cultural heritage, and education. She also holds a BA in Communication, Media, and Culture and an MA in Cultural Policy, Management, and Communication from Panteion University, as well as an MSc in Tourism Planning, Management, and Policy from the University of the Aegean. Her research interests and publications focus on visual culture, the sociology and anthropology of tourism, communication, cultural heritage, museums, and special-interest and alternative forms of tourism. She is the author of the monograph “Visual Culture and Tourism: Representations of Greece in Tourist Postcards”, published in Greek by Papazisis Publications.
You can visit her Google page at Christina Bonarou
Prof. Anna Rita Irimiás,
University of Trento, Italy and Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Short bio
Prof. Anna Rita Irimiás is a full professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary) and she also has a position at the University of Trento whose interdisciplinary work bridges the humanities, tourism studies, visual culture, and digital research methods. Educated in Italy and with extensive international academic experience, her research explores visual and digital media, cultural heritage, consumer behaviour, and collaborative approaches to knowledge creation. She has published on visual methods, including the use of social media and digital platforms in research, and is committed to innovative, participatory, and arts-based approaches to learning and inquiry.
You can visit her page at Anna Rita Irimiás