KELLEE CATON
Kellee Caton is a sociocultural theorist and applied philosopher, who proudly surfs alongside Keith Hollinshead on the “new wave” of tourism scholarship. Her research focuses on how we come to know tourism as a sociocultural phenomenon, and also on how we come to know and reshape the world through tourism—in particular, she is interested in the moral dimensions of these two interrelated processes. Her recent projects include work on the role of tourism in ideological production in educational and religious tourism contexts, conceptual analyses of the knowledge advancement process in tourism studies, and advocacy projects for the inclusion of humanities content in tourism curricula. Currently, she is exploring the value of humanist philosophy for tourism studies, as well as preparing to launch a new large-scale research project on tourism as a space of moral development for individuals and groups.
Kellee holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in Leisure Studies, and currently serves as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Tourism, in the Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts, and Tourism at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia, Canada. She sits on the editorial board of Annals of Tourism Research and the executive committee of the Tourism Education Futures Initiative. She has also been heavily involved with the Critical Tourism Studies (CTS) conference series for almost a decade and, together with Bryan Grimwood, is currently serving as co-chair to found a North American chapter of CTS, with its inaugural event planned for 2016. Kellee is also passionate about helping to build a vibrant research culture and creative educational programming at her home university, where she has served in a variety of capacities, including as chair of her university’s curriculum committee and of her faculty’s research committee, and as director and one of the chief architects of TRU’s first graduate program in tourism: the forthcoming Master of Tourism in Experience Studies. The best part of her job is teaching courses on research and sociocultural theory to TRU’s wonderful students.
In Copenhagen, Kellee will offer a considered rebuttal to postdisciplinarity’s recent critics, drawing on insights from antifoundationalism, existentialism, humanist philosophy, and biomimetics—and of course the illuminating and inspiring ideas of Keith Hollinshead!—to offer arguments about what those who would dismiss the value of the postdisciplinarity movement may be missing.
KEITH HOLLINSHEAD
Keith Hollinshead is a critical analyst of interculturality … or rather of the authority and agency of tourism to prescribe how we have ‘know’ the culture and heritage of places and populations, today. Having worked in (for example) Wales, the U.S.A., and (mainly) Australia, he generally examines the under-suspected representational regimes through which particular ‘versions’ of the history and the contemporaneity of locales are naturalised (consciously or unconsciously) for psychic and / or political advantage. Having deep interests in Indigenous inheritances, he inspects how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous visions of the world have been incrementally internalised overtime.
One of the ‘new wave’ thinkers of recent decades --- of and about the cultural and political consequences of tourism and travel --- he is a Distinguished Professor of the International Tourism Studies Association (based at Peking University: China), and is the thrice elected Vice President (for International Tourism) of the International Sociological Association. Coterminously, Keith serves as one of the longstanding Masthead Editors for both of the journals ‘Tourism Analysis’ and ‘Tourism, Culture and Communication’. Originally graduating in Romano-British history, his 21st century research portfolios nowadays pry into the worldmaking power of both the prefigured (i.e., that which is normalised in or from the past) and the configured (i.e., that which is collaboratively normalized) fantasmatics of nations and peoples.
Currently functioning as Professor of Public Culture (and Public Heritage / Public Nature!!) at the University of Bedfordshire (England), he critically inspects the power of tourism to ascribe (or creatively make) new or open possibilities for places and spaces. In Denmark in 2015, Professor Hollinshead’s presentations will largely revolve around the need for those who research or operate in Tourism Studies / Public Culture / Related Inscriptive Industries to develop critical multilogicality (i.e., informed ‘plural knowability’) in order to decently / effectively understand the longtime cosmologies, the everyday cultures, and the held spiritualities which they themselves hold in trust, or otherwise have a declarative / projective / performative responsibility for. To this end, he will principally be drawing from the pathfinding ideas of Elisabeth Buck, Homi Bhabha, Confucius, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Nelson Goodman, Joe Kincheloe, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Couze Venn, a number of Indigenous communities (particularly in ‘Australia’) … and, of course, Kellee Caton!!
SPEAKERS
BRIAN WHEELLER
Brian Wheeller holds degrees in Economics, in Applied Economics, in the Economic Impacts of Tourism, in American Studies and his doctorate on Critiquing Eco/Ego/Sustainable Tourism contextualises the debate within the wider arena of tourism planning and management, policy and practice. In addition, his interests have evolved and broadened over the years, his current research incorporating the links between travel, tourism and popular culture - in particular literature, art, photography, film, music - and their relevance to contemporary tourism thinking. His research also embraces humour, image and use of the visual in tourism and tourism education. He is Visiting Professor of Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands; was recently Professor of Tourism, University of Tasmania, Australia; is Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University and at Sheffield Hallam University, UK and is Visiting Professor of Tourism at the University of Plymouth and Honorary Professor of the University of Wales. He is an Elected Fellow of The Association for Tourism in Higher Education.
In Dialogue
CAMILLA MORDHORST
Camilla Mordhorst holds an MA in Communication and European Ethnography from the University of Roskilde, and has written a PhD thesis about the preserved objects from Ole Worm’s Museum at the National Museum of Denmark. Camilla has worked in museums for more than 20 years, with communication and public outreach as a central focus point. During the last 10 years, she has worked as Head of Exhibitions at the Medical Museion (2004-2009) and as Head of Public Outreach at the Museum of Copenhagen (2009-2013). In June 2013, she was appointed Director of the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark. In addition, she has written several books and articles on the interpretation of objects, the theory of material culture and the analysis of exhibitions.
