Aug 10 2021 66 mins
Trinity Research in Social Sciences, in partnership with its member schools and disciplines, ran a weekly series "COVID-19 and a Changing Society". These featured insights from across the social sciences from Trinity academics and international Social Scientists.
Our second event “Travel and Tourism in a Post Covid Society" was co-hosted with the School of Business and featured Prof. Brian Lucey from Trinity College, Prof. Denise O'Leary from Technological University Dublin, Prof. Brent Ritchie from the University of Queensland and Prof. Jane Ali-Knight from Edinburgh Napier University.
As one of the world's biggest industries, the tourism sector is facing massive repercussions from the Covid health crisis and the associated lockdown measures. Not only is it the hardest hit sector; it could be the one slowest to recover from the upcoming economic recession. This timely discussion features a range of international experts.
Denise O’Leary is Assistant Head of School of Hospitality Management and Tourism in Technological University Dublin. She has extensive experience as a manager, lecturer and researcher in third level institutions in Ireland and the US and over 10 years of experience as a consultant in the private sector. One focus of her academic research is on collaboration at both an organisational and inter-organisational level and she explores collaboration in networks, including food tourism networks. She is also interested in tourism skills development. She is currently involved in the Next Tourism Generation Alliance project, an EU funded project which includes education, training and industry partners from across Europe and is tasked with developing a Blueprint for addressing skills needs in the European tourism sector.
Ritchie Brent has coordinated several research projects including Sustainable Tourism CRC and consultancy work for a number of tourism organisations in the public and private sector in Australia, England, Vietnam and New Zealand. His research interests are associated with tourism risk management. His research has focused on understanding risk from an individual and organisational perspective. His work on organisations explores risk attitudes and response strategies to effectively respond and recover from crises and disasters. He also explores tourist attitudes to risk and their risk reduction behaviour, including beach goers, Australian outbound travellers and potential travellers to the Middle East and in Indonesia.
Jane Ali-Knight is currently leading and developing the festival and event subject group as well as lecturing at Universities internationally and facilitating training and development in the field. She is Course Director of the highly successful ‘Destination Leaders Programme’ delivered with Scottish Enterprise. Her core activities fall into three main areas: event and festival related programmes; research and publications and conferences and professional events. She is currently a board member of BAFA (British Arts and Festivals Association); Without Walls; Women in Tourism; Hidden Door Festival and is a Fellow of the HEA and Royal Society of the Arts.
Chairing the session will be Brian Lucey. He is Professor of Finance at the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin. A graduate of TCD , with a First Class degree in Economics in 1984, Professor Lucey has worked as a statistician in the Department of Health and as an Economist in the Central Bank, prior to joining TCD. He has studied at graduate level in Canada, Ireland and Scotland, and holds a PhD from University of Stirling.