Noreen Breakey

Dr Noreen Breakey joined the tourism team at UQ in 2005. She has been the Director for Undergraduate Programs, Coordinator of the First Year Experience, and is currently a member of the award-winning MTHEM Foundation Year Teaching Team. Individually, Dr Breakey received a UQ Excellence in Teaching & Learning Award - Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. She actively undertakes scholarship of teaching and learning and has numerous research publications on tourism and hospitality education. Dr Breakey developed the Masters course, Disciplinary Foundations of Tourism, Hospitality & Events, which she continues to Course Coordinate, encouraging students to understand how the theories and approaches from different social science and humanities disciplines can help us to address the challenges and issues in tourism, hospitality, and events.

Dr Breakey received her PhD on tourism destination development from UQ in 2006. Since then her research has explored the relationships between people, tourism and the natural environment, through her principal research areas of environmental ethics, sustainable tourism, ecotourism, community-based tourism, and tourism in protected areas. She has successfully supervised six PhD scholars through to completion.

Dr Breakey is an active member of Ecotourism Australia. She was a member of their Policy and Advocacy Committee (2011 to 2014), and subsequently on their Board of Directors (2019-2023).

Prior to her academic career, Dr Breakey worked for over a decade in industry, including hotels, resorts, tour operations, travel agencies, and events in Australia and overseas, as well as in government, developing the Destination Management Plans at Tourism Events Queensland.