Tourism as a field of enquiry is witnessing the emergence of postdisciplinary approaches in research design, practice and reporting (Coles et al.

, 2006; Ritchie 2008; Hollinshead 2010). Post-disciplinary practice entails a commitment to crossing boundaries, smudging borders, emphasizing interconnection and plurality, and to mediating between different perspectives, what Haraway (1991) refers to as cyborg knowledges. According to Jessop and Sum (2001) post disciplinary approaches reflect a crisis in the received categories of analysis and the disciplines that correspond to them. For Buckler, postdisciplinarity evokes an intellectual universe in which we inhabit the ruins of outmoded disciplinary structures, mediating between our nostalgia for this lost unity and our excitement at the intellectual freedom its demise can offer us (Buckler 2001). Certainly tourism studies scholars have acknowledge such emotions in seeking to transgress disciplinary boundaries, recognizing that tourism studies would benefit greatly from a post-disciplinary outlook (Coles, et al. 2006; Ateljevic et al. 2007; Ritchie 2008). Yet in many senses we remain, as Anderson-Gough and Hoskin (2005) observe, walking talking records of our objectivised success in disciplinary schooling and research games, and in our subjectivisation we continue to articulate and enact the discourses and practices of disciplinarity. Welcoming Encounters: Tourism Research in a Post-Disciplinary Era aims to examine, explore and debate these issues in a critical yet supportive environment. The conference will encourage debate and reflection on the opportunities, barriers and challenges inherent in embracing post-disciplinary approaches to research. Thus, Welcoming Encounters encourages a wide range of participants to share perspectives on post-disciplinary modes of knowledge production and consumption, in order to advance productive dialogue in tourism studies and beyond. _____________________________
Anderson-Gough, F. And Hoskin, K. (2005). What is it to be Post-Disciplinary? The Dirty Business of Translation, Paper Presented to the Critical Practices Stream, Critical Management Studies Conference, Cambridge; Ateljevic, I, Pritchard, A. and Morgan, N. (2007). The Critical Turn in Tourism Studies. London, Elsevier; Buckler, J. (2004). Towards A New Model of General Education at Harvard College Http://Www.Fas.Harvard.Edu/Curriculum-Review/Essays_Pdf/Julie_A_Buckler.Pdf ; Coles, T., Hall, M. And Duval, D. (2006). Tourism and Post-Disciplinary Enquiry. Current Issues in Tourism, 9(4/5): 293319; Haraway, D. J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge); Hollinshead, K. (2010). Tourism Studies and Confined Understanding: the Call For a New Sense Postdisciplinary Imaginary; Ritchie, B. (2008): Tourism Disaster Planning and Management: From Response and Recovery to Reduction and Readiness, Current Issues in Tourism, 11:4, 315-348

International conference:

WELCOMING ENCOUNTERS
TOURISM RESEARCH IN A POST-DISCIPLINARY ERA

Neuchatel, Switzerland, June 19th - 22nd, 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS

Photo: Creux du Van, Neuchatel

Abstracts (250 word max.) should be submitted through the conference website by Friday December 14th 2012. Visit the conference website at: http://www.tourism21.com/untitled1.html

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Dr Monika Bscher (Lancaster University) Monika Buscher is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, and part of ImaginationLancaster through her role as director of the Mobilities.lab Lancaster - an interdisciplinary collaboration between several different departments at Lancaster. Dr Buscher's research connects different fields of research: Mobilities Research, Design, Ethnomethodology, Science and Technology Studies, Participatory Design, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and Ubiquitous Computing. Since her PhD study of the practical and collaborative nature of imaginative practice, she has developed a programme of research on mobile work in creative and other professions, including healthcare, event management and emergency response. Her methodological innovations in video ethnography and ethnographically informed innovation have contributed to several research fields, including participatory design, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and palpable and pervasive computing. Professor Tim Coles (Exeter University) Tim Coles is Professor of Travel and Tourism Management in the University of Exeter Business School where he is also Director of the Centre for Sport, Leisure and Tourism Research. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, in its core mission of postgraduate and postdoctoral capacity building this centre extols the virtues of connecting scholars and their research in three related subject areas that cut across the full range of the social sciences. Different modes of knowledge production and the benefits of intellectually-flexible approaches have been at the heart of his work. Trained in geography, Tim moved to the Department of Management in 2005 after a two-year secondment as a University Business Research Fellow tasked with developing research with external partners. His early work (with Mike Hall and David Duval, TRR 2005, CIT 2006) examined how diverse approaches were necessary to understand how the processes of globalisation have shaped new types of tourism and mobility. More recently, he has been exploring the benefits of pluralistic approaches to interpreting and assisting tourism businesses in their efforts to address the major challenge of global environmental change. Dr Frdric Darbellay (University Institute Kurt Bsch (IUKB) Frdric Darbellay is Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the University Institute Kurt Bsch (IUKB) at Sion, Switzerland. He is member of the Direction Board and Head of the Inter- and Transdisciplinary Section. He obtained a PhD in Arts and Humanities from the University of Lausanne and he holds a Degree of Advanced Studies in Linguistics from the University of Genve. He conducts research in the interdisciplinary field of Discourse Analysis and Communication, and develops works on the theory, epistemology and methodology of interdisciplinary teaching and research in general and in particular in Tourism Studies and Children's Rights Studies. Among his main (authored and co-edited) publications are Interdisciplinarit et Transdisciplinarit en Analyse des Discours, Slatkine, 2005; Le Dfi de lInter- et Transdisciplinarit, PPUR, 2008; A Vision of Transdisciplinarity. Laying Foundations for a World Knowledge Dialogue, EPFL Press/CRC Press, 2008; Repenser lInterdisciplinarit, Slatkine, 2010; Common Knowledge: The Challenge of Transdisciplinarity, EPFL Press/CRC Press, 2011; Au Miroir des Disciplines: Rflexions sur les Pratiques dEnseignement et de Recherche Inter- et Transdisciplinaires, Peter Lang, 2011; La Circulation des Savoirs: Interdisciplinarit, Concepts Nomades, Analogies, Mtaphores, Peter Lang, 2012. Frdric Darbellay is a member of the U.S.-based Association for Integrative Studies (AIS) and the International Network for Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity (INIT). Professor Keith Hollinshead (University of Bedfordshire) Keith Hollinshead is an Anglo-Australian (and transdisciplinary / adisciplinary) analyst of held fantasmatics about culture, nature, and heritage. Originally a Romano-British historian, Keith inspects the visioning of the world as place and space are mobilized (i.e., versioned) through tourism. Having worked in country park planning in Wales, in rural development in U.S.A. (Colorado), and (mainly) in Australia --- where he held alternate outback / metropolitan positions in Western Australia, Victoria, the Northern Territory, and New South Wales --- he probes the representational repertoires of communities / institutions / corporations who use tourism for psychic and / or political gain. With a long interest in Indigenous traditions, he sometimes critically and sometimes creatively explores how those long-held inheritances are transitionalising today, under the vicissitudes of globalisation and glocalisation. A Distinguished Professor of the International Tourism Studies Association (Peking University: China), and former Vice President (International Tourism) of the International Sociological Association, Keith functions as Critical Reviews Editor for both Tourism Analysis and Tourism, Culture and Communication. Having worked at the University of Technology : Sydney (Kuring-gai CAE: Australia) in the 1980s, and at Texas A&M University (USA) in the 1990s, he is now Professor of Public Culture at the University of Bedfordshire (England). There, his main research agendas examine the worldmaking agency of all and sundry in and through tourism, and the normalizing reach of the aspirational knowledges of populations.

Further details of keynote speeches are available on the conference website.