Welcome to “Meet the Visiting Professor”, a section dedicated to introducing to you our Visiting Professors, where you will have the opportunity to get to know them and find out how they engage with Edinburgh Napier University, and specifically with the Tourism Research Centre (TRC).
Today, Associate Professor Judith Mair, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, tells us about her strong connections with ENU and TRC researchers, with whom she has been friend for a very long time! Despite being in Australia, she is of Scottish origins, and takes every opportunity she has to come back to connect with family and colleagues.
“Although I now live in Australia, my roots are in Scotland! I grew up in a small village on the West Coast, but I went to university in Edinburgh and fell in love with the city. I stayed there for a few years after graduating, working in the Tourist Information Centre on Princes Street, and then for VisitScotland. I consider Edinburgh to be the place where my involvement with the tourism industry and my tourism and events research interests really started.
After completing a PhD in Tourism at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (coincidentally at the same time as Dina (Constantia) Anastasiadou), my career took me to Australia, firstly to Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne, then Monash University, and now the University of Queensland in Brisbane. It was at Victoria University that I first met Dr Martin Robertson, then at VU and now at Edinburgh Napier University. We share similar research interests – primarily in sustainability and event management – and have been friends ever since.
My work aims to understand and enhance the positive impacts of tourism and events on the communities and societies which host them and my expertise lies in fields including mega-event legacies, the future of events, the links between events and social connectivity, and the potential impacts of climate change on the events sector.
My holidays are often combined with work-related travel, but when I have the chance, I love to visit the wonderful beaches and coastline of Australia. My favourite destination (apart from Scotland of course!) is probably the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland – the archetypal tropical island paradise with the friendliest locals I’ve ever met. I heartily recommend it!
Although I don’t get the opportunity to visit Edinburgh or Scotland much (the journey from Australia is a pretty long one!), I jump at the chance to come home, and having a visiting role at ENU allows me to combine work and pleasure. I enjoy the opportunity to meet and network with old friends and new and share my research with as wide an audience as possible, both in academia and more broadly with industry and government. I also value the chance to act as a mentor for emerging scholars and provide them with as much support and guidance as I can. I hope to collaborate in publications and ongoing project work in the field of events studies with students and colleagues, particularly in relation to sustainability and climate change, which I feel is one of the most important areas we can study. “