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The Tourism Studies Working Group is a network of more than 50 scholars throughout northern California. It includes faculty and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines, among them anthropology, history, education, landscape architecture, sociology, political science, Spanish & Portuguese, ethnic studies, city planning, gender studies, and many others. Current and Former Core Researchers and Affiliates Visiting Scholars Laura Bathurst, a sociocultural anthropologist and Latin American specialist, is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Studies in the School of International Studies at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Dr. Bathurst received her B.A. in Anthropology and Modern Languages (Spanish) from Kansas State University and her MA and Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. An enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she has long been interested in indigenous issues. Her dissertation, "Reconfiguring Identities: Tacana Retribalization in Bolivia's Amazon Basin" reflects this interest. Dr. Bathurst has conducted research in Bolivia, Spain, and the United States. Her research and teaching interests include Latin America, the Amazon basin, identity, power and control, indigenous issues, linguistic anthropology, and intercultural communication. At Pacific, she teaches classes in anthropology and international studies and assists with the continual development and implementation of Pacific’s innovative integrated pre-departure orientation and reentry program for students studying abroad. She also serves as Academic Director of the MA in Intercultural Relations. lbathurst (at) pacific.edu
ALEXIS BUNTEN  Alexis with Hone Mihaka of Taimai Tours, Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Alexis Celeste Bunten is a senior researcher witht the FrameWorks Institute and the project ethonographer for IPinCH, Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage project. Dr. Bunten became active with the Tourism Studies Working Group in 2006 when she began an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Dr. Nelson Graburn. Alexis served as co-chair of the Working Group in 2008-09. Bunten's areas of expertise include the heritage industry, cultural production and consumption, interpretation, cross-cultural communication, community development, the anthropology of work, and Indigenous tourism. Throughout her academic path, Dr. Bunten has remained committed to her professional work with various Indigenous organizations to forward sustainable economic developmnet in cultural tourism, heritage management and traditional and innovative performing arts. 2006 - "Sharing Culture or Selling Out? A Case Study of Self-Commodification in the Native-Owned Cultural Tourism Industry along the Northwest Coast of North America," American Ethnologist 35(3). 2010 - "More Like Ourselves: Indigenous Capitalism Through Tourism, in American Indian Quarterly, 34(3). 2011 - "Consumption and Resistance in Native American Touristic Performance," in Great Expectations: Imagination Anticipation and Enchantment in Tourism, Ed. By Jonathan Skinner and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos, New York: Berghann Books. [forthcoming] "A Call for Attention to Indigenous Capitalisms," in New Proposals Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, 4(3).
 Charlie and daughter "conducting field research" at the boat races in Sisakhet Village, Lao PDR. Charles Carroll received his PhD in Cultural Transformation, Political Economy, and Social Practice at UC Berkeley. He holds a BA in Rhetoric and Communications from UC Davis, and an MA in Education from CSU Sacramento. Charles served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2010-2011. His research focuses on social transformations through changing practices of "development" in mainland Southeast Asia. He recently returned from long-term ethnographic fieldwork on transforming practices of capitalism and cultural tourism within the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Additional recent research and writing projects have focused on tourism, Christian missionaries, and the production of ethnicity in Northern Thailand; changing mathematical practices in textile production workplaces; and schools, learning and the promotion of 'traditional crafts' in Northern Thailand. Representative publication: “My mother's best friend's sister-in-law is coming with us”: Domestic and International Travels With a Group of Lao Tourists,’ in Tim Winter et al., eds., Asia on Tour: The Rise of the Asian Tourist. New York: Routledge, 2008. ccarroll (at) berkeley.edu
Jenny Chio is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley in 2009 and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the China Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney, from 2009 to 2012. Jenny served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2007-08 and again in 2008-09. Broadly, her current research projects explore the intersections of mobility, modernity, and media in China's cultural politics. She has conducted fieldwork in two rural, ethnic minority villages in southwestern China since 2006, with a particular emphasis on understanding the impact of tourism on village social relations, individual conceptualizations of self, and local perspectives on travel and modernization. Her forthcoming book, A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China, explores these issues and will be published in 2014 by the University of Washington Press. Jenny is also an ethnographic filmmaker and her film based on this research, titled 农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness, is distributed by Berkeley Media, LLC. She is now starting new research on amateur media production, ethnic identity, and social transformation in rural China and is also working on a collaborative project with Luke Robinson on Chinese independent documentary film and post-socialist public culture in China today. Trailer for 农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness [click here] Personal website: www.jennychio.com Representative publication: “Leave the fields without leaving the countryside: Modernity and mobility in rural, ethnic China.” in Identities: Global Studies of Culture and Power 18(6): 551-575, 2011. "The Internal Expansion of China: Tourism and the Production of Distance.” in Tim Winter, Peggy Teo, and T.C. Chang, eds., Asia on Tour: The Rise of the Asian Tourist. New York: Routledge, 207-220, 2008.
ATHINODOROS CHRONIS
Dr. Chronis served as co-chair for the Working Group in 2012-2013 and 2013-2014.
MAHLON W.L. CHUTE Mahlon has acted as the TSWG webmaster and newsletter editor since 2006 and served on the exceutive committee for the Working Group since 2013.
Catherine Elisabeth Covey is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at UC Berkeley. She received a BA with honors in Anthropology from the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. She also received a MS in Architecture at UC Berkeley with emphases on the History of Architecture and Urbanism and Environmental Design and Urbanism in Developing Countries. Cathy served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2009-10. Cathy's research interests focus on relationships of the built environment, notions of history, tradition and heritage discourses, and the ways that urban centers are reproduced, experienced, and lived by inhabitants, users, and visitors. Her research examines the Andean city of Cuzco, Peru, an urban center transformed from an Inka imperial capital to a Spanish colonial city, and now as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a "global property," with a distinctive architectural aesthetic. catherine_covey (at) berkeley.edu
 Jennifer Devine is a doctoral student in Geography at UC Berkeley. She holds a MSc in Human Geography Research and a MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Geography and International Studies from the University of Washington. Jen served as co-chair of the TSWG in 2011-2012. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on contemporary dynamics and trajectories of social, political and economic development in Guatemala and Central America. These interests include: tourism, neo-liberalism, multiculturalism, the social production of difference, labor market experiences and discrimination, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and the politics of research and knowledge production. Jennifer served as co-chair for the Working Group from 2012-2013. jendevine (at) berkeley.edu
 Mark F. DeWitt was recently appointed the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Endowed Chair in Traditional Music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he is a Professor of Music. Dr. DeWitt's research focuses on music's evocation of faraway places, for people who have lived in those places, for those who have never been to them, and for tourists. The activities of folk revivalists, both musicians and dancers who spend significant amounts of time learning and doing cultural activities that were not part of their family background or upbringing, are also phenomena that command his attention. These interests stem from his dissertation field research, which took place among Creole and Cajun immigrants from Louisiana and Texas, along with many folk revivalists, who play and dance to Louisiana French music here in northern California. His book published in October 2008, Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World (University Press of Mississippi), explains how ethnicity, tourism and revivalism--i.e., both insider and outsider perspectives--can work together to sustain social dance and music-making far away from a culture's place of origin. Representative publication: "Heritage, Tradition and Travel: Louisiana French Culture Placed on a California Dance Floor." The World of Music 41.3(1999):57-83. deweitt (at) louisiana.edu
CLARE BENEDICKS FISCHER  Clare Fischer is Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Emerita Professor of Religion and Culture, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley and currently serves as Visiting Professor in the Theology and Religion Department of the University of San Francisco where she instructs courses in religious pluralism. She is currently studying domestic tourism associated with the iconic "Rosie the Riveter" sites in city of Richmond, California. Her research focuses on the annual Homefront Festival and the collaboration of civic, municipal and federal agencies in advancing a permanent waterfront attraction based on shipyard labor during that historic time. Formerly, she conducted field studies in Indonesia focusing on pilgrimage and tourism in Java and Bali. Her interest in the negative images produced as a consequence of the terrorist bombings in Bali continues with a published essay on memory and tourism and a current study of regeneration of tourism in Bali and the role of international festival. Representative publication: "Remembering Bali as Paradise: The Bombing of Kuta and the Recovery of the Balinese Tourist Identity," Journeys, 2006.
Jing Ge is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of California, Berkeley, and a research fellow at the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems in Tourism, LA. Jing holds a PhD degree from the University of Queensland Business School. She has close to 10 years of industry experience with a focus on marketing communication and social media. Jing served as co-chair for the Working Group from 2018-2020.
Rachel Faye Giraudo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the California State University, Northridge. Dr. Giraudo received her PhD, BA and MA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley. She also received a MPhil in World Archaeology from the University of Cambridge. Representative text: "Cultural Heritage Tourism Research at the Tsodilo Hills, Botswana," Kalahari Peoples Network, 2008. Available here. rachel.giraudo (at) csun.edu
Dr. Gohar is a tourism & landscape planner and sustainable development expert with nearly two decades of working experience with municipal governments, research institutes, international development agencies, private sector firms and local community organizations. He has worked extensively in the MENA region Africa and Europe, with specific focus on tourism planning in the southern region of the Red Sea in Egypt, Agro- tourism planning for different sites in Saudi Arabia, the Cradle of Human Kind Park and the Kalahari in South Africa, and sustainable tourism in Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountains) in Libya. His scholarship focuses on finding the appropriate balance between the trendies of rapid tourism development and maintaining ecological integrity in both dense cities as well as remote nomadic towns. His doctorate research in the Dep. of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley focused on understanding tourism development and its direct & relative impact on the environment. His current research with the Berkeley’s TSWG is focusing on tourism governance and the different forces and dynamics that shape tourism development. Dr. Gohar obtained previous degrees in Urban & Regional planning from Cairo university, a Master’s in urban design from Oxford Brookes University, and a diploma in Land Management from Erasmus University. Amir served as co-chair for the Working Group from 2013-2014. amir.gohar (at) berkeley.edu
BERTRAM M. GORDON His current research focuses on the relationship of tourism and war, and is currently writing a book entitled Tourism and the Tourist Imagination in World War II France: From the German Conquest through the Creation of Memory, 1940-2011. He has also written about gender and its depiction in cinema imagery in relation to tourism; and tourism in relation to the May-June 1968 Paris student revolt. In 2001-02 he was Chercheur associé étranger at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, C.N.R.S., Cachan, France. His books include Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (1980) and The Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy and the Resistance, 1938-1946 (1998). From 1999 to 2001 he was Provost (chief academic officer) at Mills College. “The Mediterranean as a Tourist Destination, from Classical Antiquity to Club Med,” Mediterranean Studies, 12 (2003), pp. 203-226. "Destinations and the Woman as a Motif in Film and Tourism," in Laurent Tissot, ed., Construction d'une Industrie Touristique aux 19e et 20e Siècles, Perspectives Internationales/Development of a Tourist Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries, International Perspectives (Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Alphil, 2003), 359-370. “El turismo de masas: un concepto problématico en la historia del siglo XX,” in Turismo y nueva sociedad, Historia Contemporánea, 25 (2002, II), pp. 125-156.
NELSON GRABURN
Nelson Graburn (Co-chair 2014-2017) was educated in Natural Sciences and Anthropology at
Cambridge, McGill, and University of Chicago. He is emeritus professor of
socio-cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley, Curator of North American
Ethnology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and co-chair
of the Canadian Studies Program. He also recently retired from an appointment
as Senior Professor at the International Institute for Culture, Tourism and
Development at London Metropolitan University. Professor Graburn
served as co-chair of the Tourism Studies Working Group in 2010-2013, and
was a driving force in the organization of our 2011 conference,
Tourism Imaginaries/Imaginaires Touristiques. Nelson Graburn has served as co-chair for the Working Group from 2012-2022.
STEPHANIE HOM
NAOMI LEITE
Naomi Leite, co-founder of the Tourism Studies Working Group, holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology (UC Berkeley, 2011). She is Lecturer (UK Assistant Professor) in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, where she directs the MA program in Anthropology of Travel and Tourism. Her research and teaching focus on cultural dimensions of global interconnection, with international tourism as a primary site for examining cross-cultural interaction, negotiation of identity, and imagination as a social practice. Since 1996, she has based her field research in Portugal. She has published on theoretical developments in the anthropology of tourism, tourism imaginaries, diasporic tourism, heritage and memory, and museums and materiality. Her first book, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging, is forthcoming from University of California Press. She is currently editing Taking Tourism Seriously: Edward Bruner and the Anthropology of Tourism, a volume of essays on Bruner's theoretical legacy in the anthropological study on tourism, together with Quetzil Castañeda. She is Co-Convenor of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group, chairs the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network, and serves on the editorial boards of Annals of Tourism Research and The Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change. Dr. Leite served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2003-04, 2006-07, 2007-08, and 2010-11. Representative publications: 2014 "Afterword: Locating Imaginaries in the Anthropology of Tourism.” In Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches, ed. Noel Salazar and Nelson Graburn. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 260-278. 2009 "Anthropological Interventions in Tourism Studies." In The Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies, ed Tazim Jamal and Mike Robinson, London: Sage, pp. 35-64. (with N. Graburn) nl15 (at) soas.ac.uk Scott G.K. MacLeod is an American academic and Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at World University and School - worlduniversityandschool.org. He's taught "Network Society, Information Technology and the Global University" on Harvard University's virtual island, and on Penn State Isle in Second Life as a Penn State University instructor. He's taught both anthropology and sociology in real life at Chatham University, the University of Pittsburgh, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a Master's Degree in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Diploma of Research from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the information technology network society age, the world wide web cosmos, the virtual, and actual-virtual Harbin Hot Springs, seeking to facilitate the development of a realistic virtual earth for STEM research, and as classrooms (Think Google Street View with time slider +). He is World University and School's founder, president and CEO. WUaS forked successfully in 2017 into a second legal entity, the WUaS Press / Corp, planned with machine translation in all 7,097 living languages. Wiki World University and School is CC-4 MIT OCW-centric (in 5 languages) and CC Yale OYC-centric and seeks to develop major universities in all ~200 countries' main and official languages, as well as wiki schools in all 7,097 living languages too; WUaS plans to offer online CC OCW Bachelor, Ph.D., law, M.D. as well as I.B. high school degrees, partly in group video. Personal web site: http://www.scottmacleod.com For additional books and bio information, see: https://amazon.com/author/scottmacleodworlduniversity Representative publication: "Naked Harbin Ethnography: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality and Virtual Harbin" (Academic Press at World University and School, 2016).
Benjamin Porter is an assistant professor of Near Eastern archaeology in UC Berkeley's Near Eastern Studies Department. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. He currently co-directs the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project in Jordan, where he is helping plan a sustainable archaeological site for local and international tourism. bwporter (at) berkeley.edu
Dr. Lusha Sa is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at South-central University for Nationalities, Wuhan, China. She received her Ph.D in Ethnology from South-central University for Nationalities. She is currently a visiting scholar in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests embrace the heritage and ethnic tourism development in China. She has been conducting fieldwork in ethnic minority municipalities Dali, Lijiang in southwestern China since 2008. This research project provides tourism anthropologists and practitioners with an intrinsic understanding of the impact of tourism on sociocultural reconstruction, intercultural communication in ethnic tourism, and ethnic identity in glocalization. Lusha has been selected by a National Social Science Funding Project ‘Intercultural Communication and Ethnic Culture Reproduction’ and is currently investigating the intercultural communication as well as heritage protection in ethnic tourism in China. Representative publication: “Intercultural Communication and Sociocultural Reconstruction: Anthropological Interpretation of Tourism in LiJiang.” Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. lushasa (at) berkeley.edu
ALEX SARAGOZA
 Alex Saragoza is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in Latin American history from the University of California, San Diego. A specialist on modern Mexico, Prof. Saragoza's research has examined the structural origins of Mexican migration, focusing on the role of the state in the process of the concentration of wealth and power in Mexico. In addition, he has done research on the transnational aspects of cultural formations in Mexico, including work on Mexican cinema, radio and television. His recent work has encompassed research on cultural linkages among Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. He is currently at work on a comparative study of the history of Mexican and Cuban tourism. Representative publication: "The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929–1952." In Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 91-115.
Pablo Seward is an undergraduate senior double-majoring in Anthropology and Psychology at UC Berkeley. He recently returned from conducting fieldwork in Easter Island for his senior honors thesis in Anthropology. His research explores how two predominant spatial imaginaries over the island he studies, associated with the names "Easter Island" and "Rapa Nui", think the landscape of the island, and envision the island's place in the cosmos, differently. He is specifically interested in seeing how the "Easter Island" imaginary and the correlative development of cultural tourism on the island may be challenged by new ways in which the Rapa Nui conceive, produce, and circulate memory about their island. Pablo served as co-chair for the Working Group from 2013-2014. SHELLY STEWARD
 Shelly exploring social relations on the Zugspitze in the German Alps. Shelly Steward is a PhD student in the department of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include social class, tourism, environment, and ethnographic methods. Her Master’s thesis explores class tensions and processes of distinction in a winter resort town. She has also written on the symbolic meaning of neighborhood appearance and the effectiveness of localizing educational curricula, and is a National Science Foundation Fellow. Prior to coming to Berkeley, Shelly was a science teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota steward (at) berkeley.edu
JENNIFER PHELPS QUINN
MAKI TANAKA
ROBIN L. TURNER  Robin L. Turner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Butler University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Berkeley, an MA in Political Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a BA with honors in Public Policy Studies from Duke University. She served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2007-08. Robin’s research interests focus on the relationship between people, the state, and natural resources. This encompasses three themes: the political economy of resource-based sectors (nature tourism, mineral extraction), the politics of conservation, and urban environmental justice politics. Robin's dissertation, Politics Where the Wild Things Are: Nature Tourism, Property Rights, and Traditional Leadership in Rural Botswana and South Africaseeks to answer the question, how does engagement in tourism affect local political relations? Robin conducted fieldwork in four nature tourism destinations -- the eastern Okavango Delta and Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana, and Madikwe Game Reserve and Mapungubwe National Park in South Africa -- and ten nearby localities -- two freehold farming areas and eight villages. Representative publication: "Communities, Wildlife Conservation, and Tourism-Based Development: Can Community-Based Nature Tourism Live up to Its Promise?" Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 7(2004): 161-182. rlturner (at) berkeley.edu
ALEX WESTHOFF
 Alex Westhoff received a joint Masters of Landscape Architecture and Masters of City Planning in the Departments of Landscape Architecture/Environmental Planning and City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. He also holds a B.S. in Animal and Plant Systems from the University of Minnesota. His academic studies have centered around the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta area, regarding issues of urban growth containment, agricultural conservation, and riparian corridors. Through his thesis he proposed the idea of the Delta obtaining a National Heritage Area designation which could help preserve the many unique features of the region in a sustainable manner. Since completion of his thesis, he has continued to work on this project through his position with the Delta Protection Commission. He was also awarded the Scott Traveling Scholarship from the Department of Landscape Architecture/Environmental Planning which enabled him to travel to several countries in Africa and Europe to examine sustainable tourism development in other delta landscapes. Representative text: The Sacramento Delta National Heritage Corridor. Master's Thesis, Landscape Architecture/Environmental Planning and City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley, 2008. alexw (at) berkeley.edu
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