WORLDS OF IMAGINATION RESEARCH PROJECT
This ERC-funded research project focuses on film tourism: the phenomenon of people visiting locations from popular films or TV series. Recent years have seen explosive growth in this type of tourism, with far-reaching implications for the experience and organization of landscapes. The aim of this project is to discover why and under what circumstances films or TV series give rise to new tourism flows, and which variations can be found based on the specific characteristics of the media productions, local communities and tourists involved.
WORLDS OF IMAGINATION EDITED VOLUME (2023):
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON MEDIA, TOURISM AND CULTURE
We are currently working on an edited volume entitled Worlds of Imagination: Global Perspectives on Media, Tourism and Culture. In the wake of our successful international conference on media, place and tourism held at Erasmus University Rotterdam (7-9 of April 2021, see below), we gained interest of a reputable publisher, Routledge, to prepare an edited volume on the topic, and we are now finalizing the manuscript. The aim of this edited volume is to deliver a significant contribution to the study of media tourism and to provide a unique platform uniting a plurality of voices from different disciplines and continents. We seek to bring together scholars across disciplines, such as media studies, cultural studies, cultural geography, fan studies, tourism studies, and development studies.
WORLDS OF IMAGINATION ONLINE CONFERENCE (2021):
MEDIA, PLACE AND TOURISM IN TODAY’S GLOBAL WORLD
Worlds of Imagination: Media, Place and Tourism in Today’s Global World was a 3-day online international conference that highlighted the interconnections between media, tourism and place. The conference brought together the diverse perspectives, approaches and actors involved in this process while focusing on critical issues accompanying this multifaceted phenomenon. We ventured off the beaten track by adopting a decidedly global perspective and putting emphasis on the exploration, analysis and comparison of cases from around the world. This conference broadened the horizons by including and comparing research into, for example, Bollywood films, Brazilian telenovelas, South Korean K-drama and Caribbean locations.