Bob Beeton Graduated from the University of New England (UNE) in 1969. From 1970 to 1973 he worked as an ecologist on bird and other pest problems on the Ord River Development W.A. In 1974 he returned to UNE and was on the staff of the Zoology Department where he taught Biology, Animal Behaviour, Ecology and Experimental Methods. His research was in wildlife management. In 1978 Bob was recruited to the Queensland Agricultural College (QAC) to establish the Wilderness Reserves and Wildlife program. By 1990 the program had diversified into several other programs and the Natural Systems and Wildlife Management degree. QAC amalgamated with UQ in 1990 and following amalgamation Bob was involved in establishing the Bachelor of Environmental Management and Master of Environmental Management programs. Since 1991 Bob was has been Head of Department and Head of School for 11 years and served on many University Committees. Bob has also been involved in extensive Community and Government service both at the State and Commonwealth level. Awards include 1988 Australian Bi-Centennial Award Rainforest Canopy Walk Project. 1994 Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Queensland; 2000 Affirmative Action Commendation, University of Queensland; 2000 Fellow Environmental Institute of Australia and New Zealand (FEIANZ); 2009 Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for contribution to Environment and Resource Management and 2009 Lockyer Legend for service to the community.
Professor Pierre Benckendorff is an award-winning researcher specialising in visitor behaviour, technology enhanced learning and tourism. He has held several teaching and learning leadership positions at The University of Queensland and James Cook University in Australia. His experience includes coordinating a team of teaching and learning staff, program quality assurance and accreditation, and curriculum reviews of undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs in business, tourism, hospitality and event management. He has developed and taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in introductory tourism management, international tourism, tourist behaviour, tourism and leisure futures, tourism transportation, tourism operations, tourism technologies, tourism analysis, business skills and marketing communications.
Pierre has been actively involved in a number of national teaching and learning projects totalling close to AUD 1 million in grant funding. In 2007, he received a national Carrick citation for outstanding contributions to student learning. Pierre was part of the national team that developed the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards for Tourism, Hospitality and Events and has continued to co-lead efforts to embed and measure these standards under the auspices of CAUTHE. He is currently the co-chair of knowledge creation for the BEST Education Network and in this capacity, has worked with the World Travel and Tourism Council to edit a book of international cases based on Tourism for Tomorrow award finalists and winners. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Teaching and Learning in Tourism. Pierre serves regularly as an external reviewer of tourism programs in Australia and overseas institutions.
His research interests include visitor behaviour, tourism information technologies, and tourism education and training. He has authored over 80 publications in these areas in leading international journals and is a regular speaker at tourism research conferences. He is on the editorial board of several leading tourism journals and is a regular reviewer of papers. He has also co-authored one of the leading textbooks on tourism and information technology. He has served as a judge for the Queensland Tourism Awards as well as the Australian Tourism Awards. His passion for travel and tourism has taken him to some of the world’s leading theme parks and airports, the major cities of Europe and North America, the African Savannah and the bustling streets of Asia. He has also travelled extensively throughout Australia and New Zealand.
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.
Dr. Buning is a Senior Lecturer within the tourism discipline in the UQ Business School and the research lead for the UQ Micromobility Research Cluster. His research interests reside at the intersection of physical activity, travel, and events. Within this area, his research agenda is focused on how tourists are physically active as both a driver of tourism behaviour (i.e., active lifestyle sports) and during visitation (i.e., active transport). His research works on active lifestyle sports closely mirrors his passions in active sport tourism for mountain biking, cycling, running, rock climbing, hiking, and more. His work crosses over to active transport through bikeshare, eScooters, and more generally micromobility where he is focused on tourism usage and related impacts.
The outcome of his work enables communities, events, and organizations to efficiently market to and attract visitors, encourage physical activity generally, and improve the related impact to destinations as a form of sustainable tourism. Dr. Buning has worked in the running event industry managing race logistics and continues to work with physical activity focused organizations, events, and communities as a consultant in developing data driven business strategy. He regularly publishes on the topics of sport tourism, event management, and active transport.
Interested in working on research, teaching, or consulting projects? Please get in touch!
Sara Dolnicar was born in Ljubljana (Slovenia), grew up in Vienna (Austria) and now lives and works in Brisbane (Australia). She holds university degrees in psychology and business administration.
Sara is an expert on Airbnb and Airbnb regulation, making hotels operate in more environmentallyb sustainable ways while reducing operating cost, public acceptance of recycled waster and social marketing more generally.
To date, Sara has (co-)authored more than 300 refereed papers and led 16 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, including the prestigous QEII and Laureate Fellowships. She won more than 30 awards, including two lifetime achievement awards: The US-based Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Distinguished Researcher Award (2017) for ground-breaking research that positively impacts the tourism industry, and outstanding service to the tourism research community (in the association’s 48-year history this award has been given to only four people); and the Slovenian Ambassador of Science 2016, the highest honour the Republic of Slovenia bestows on expatriate Slovenian researchers in recognition of global excellence, impact, and knowledge transfer.
Associate Professor Karen Hughes lectures at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the areas of sustainable tourism and visitor management. Her research interests include interpretation and environmental education, wildlife tourism, heritage tourism, visitor behaviour and sustainable tourism. She is particularly interested in exploring how interpretation can be used across a range of contexts to attract, engage and inspire visitors.
Karen’s PhD studies focused on designing and evaluating the impact of support materials on families’ adoption of environmental behaviours following a visit to Mon Repos turtle rookery. She has also explored public responses to environmental campaigns, public perceptions of replica sites as conservation tools, and the potential use of technology in connecting with new visitor audiences. Her most recent work involves designing and evaluating the impact of values-based interpretation on visitors’ long-term environmental behaviour. Karen has supervised four PhD students, three Masters students and two honours students to completion in the areas of interpretation, experience design and environmental behaviour change. Associate Professor Hughes has also been a lecturer and researcher at James Cook University, Charles Darwin University and Queensland University of Technology.
Renuka is an applied economist and Asia-Pacific expert who specialises in a broad range of topics from trade wars (specifically the US-China trade war) to the sharing economy (AirBnb, Uber DiDi etc). Her areas of interest and expertise also extend to empirical and policy analysis in development and agricultural economics, tourism economics, international trade, and productivity growth analysis, using econometrics and macroeconomic models
Judith is an expert on events and tourism impacts and legacy. Judith’s work aims to understand and enhance the positive impacts of tourism and events on the communities and societies which host them. She is working on a number of projects in fields including Olympic Games legacies, the links between events and social connectivity (including social capital, social cohesion and social justice) and assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the tourism and events sector. She received her PhD from the University of Strathclyde in 2005, focusing on decision-making in the context of academic conferences. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Victoria University, Melbourne, and worked in the Department of Management at Monash University, Melbourne, before coming to UQ in 2014.
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
Tim O’Rourke's research investigates past and present applications of cross-cultural design across different building types and settings. Such projects often require multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of architectural problems, informed by the histories of buildings and the people who use them. A Discovery Project on healthcare architecture combined different research methods to ask if design can improve the experience and participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in hospitals and clinics.
Tim's current research focuses on the design and social histories of Indigenous housing from the 1950s assimilation era to the 2000s. These studies seek to answer questions about design intentions and the origins, development and evaluation of architectural methods that improved public housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. His PhD examined the history and use of Aboriginal building traditions in the Wet Tropics Region of Queensland. He has contributed to a range of research projects related to Indigenous housing, settlements and landscapes. Research topics include self-constructed dwellings and vernacular building technologies, cultural tourism, adaption to climate change and housing sustainability. Results from these studies have been published in technical reports, conference proceedings, journals and book chapters.
Tim is a registered architect, having worked in architectural practices in Brisbane and Sydney, and he maintains an interest in timber construction and joinery. As a sole practitioner, he has designed residential projects and worked on a range of building types for Aboriginal communities. He teaches architectural technology and design and has offered a range of research topics in the Master of Architecture program.
Memberships
Fellow Australian Institute of Architects
Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand
Dr Faith Ong's research focus lies in the role of events, tourism and hospitality as tools of social change. Thus, she researches into the social impacts of events and tourism on communities. Her work explores how different forms of festivals, community gatherings and targeted events impact the social inclusivity of places. Volunteering is also one of Faith’s areas of expertise, determining the impacts of volunteering in tourism and events on the individual.
Faith is interested in enabling full and inclusive participation of communities across a broad spectrum of events and travel. In particular, her work has focused on communities that are sexually and culturally diverse, as well as people with disabilities. She continues to explore the signals of inclusion and exclusion at occasions that are meant to bring communities together.
Dr Jan Packer has a background in Psychology having completed a BA (Hons) at UQ in 1976. Her PhD (Education, QUT, 2004) focussed on motivations for learning in educational leisure settings. She has published broadly in the area of educational psychology over many years. The current major focus of her research is in applying the principles of educational, environmental and positive psychology to understand and facilitate visitor experiences in leisure settings such as museums and other tourist and leisure contexts. Jan was co-editor of the international journal, Visitor Studies from 2005 through 2011.
Professor Ritchie's research interests are associated with tourism risk management. His research has focused on understanding risk from an individual and organisational perspective. His work on organisations explores risk attitudes and response strategies to effectively respond and recover from crises and disasters. He also explores tourist attitudes to risk and their risk reduction behaviour, including beach goers, Australian outbound travellers and potential travellers to the Middle East and in Indonesia. His research projects also examine the factors that influence the formation of risk attitudes and behaviour by using social and organisational psychology theory and concepts. Recently his interests have expanded to include carbon offsetting to understand consumer preferences and adoption of carbon offseting in an aviation context. He currently holds an ARC Discovery Grant and an ARC Linkage grant on this topic area. He has given keynote speeches at over ten international conferences and has supervised 15 PhD students to completion. Brent is currently unable to advise any PhD students.
Professor Ritchie has coordinated several research projects including Sustainable Tourism CRC and consultancy work for a number of tourism organisations in the public and private sector in Australia, England, Vietnam and New Zealand. He has also published extensively in academic journals including Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing and Current Issues in Tourism. He was former editor of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management and is on the editorial board of eight international journals including the Journal of Travel Research. Professor Ritchie is also a Distinguished Professor and member of the Center for Tourism Research at Wakayama University, Japan and an Affiliate of the Tourism Crisis Management Instiute at the University of Florida, USA.
Professor Ritchie joined the School of Tourism in June 2008, having previously worked as the head of the tourism discipline and the research area at the University of Canberra. Professor Ritchie has also previously worked at the School of Service Management at the University of Brighton UK. He has a PhD from the University of Otago, New Zealand graduating in 2000
Richard previously practiced as a chef, predominantly managing foodservice operations in the prestige club, heritage facility and hotel sectors, before joining UQ in 2005. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in hospitality and tourism management and professional development. His expertise and scholarship in teaching and learning are recognized by awards and advisory appointments at state, national and international level. His research projects, often funded by competitive local, national and international awarding bodies, explore tourism, hospitality and culinary workforce policy and planning especially in relation to youth and MH&W, skills development, identifying ‘foodies’ consumer behaviours and designing and evaluating education programs. He holds an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship, to develop a tourism workforce crisis resilience and recovery strategy in partnership with Queensland Tourism Industry Council.
Dr Lisa Ruhanen (PhD, GCEd, BBusHons) is a Professor in Tourism and the Deputy Head of School (Graduate Education, Tourism and Marketing) with the The University of Queensland Business School. She has undertaken more than 35 academic and consultancy research projects in Australia and overseas in the areas of Indigenous tourism, sustainable tourism and policy, planning and governance. Lisa has more than 150 academic publications and in 2017 she and colleagues co-edited a book on Indigenous Tourism: Cases from Australia and New Zealand.
Lisa jas taught in the areas of sustainable and responsible tourism, ethics, and tourism in developing countries. For more than a decade, she has worked closely with United Nations Tourism on a variety of research projects and undertook a secondment to the organisation's headquarters in Madrid. She is currently an Advisory Board member and auditor for the UN Tourism TedQual accreditation program. Lisa is actively engaged with a range of start-up Indigenous tourism businesses and tourism organisations in Australia using her research expertise to explore visitor demand, market opportunities and product development strategies and has led research and consultancy studies for the Federal and State governments in Australia on Indigenous tourism, including the inaugural ‘Queensland Indigenous Tourism Strategy’. She is currently the co-lead for the First Nations Tourism Research Hub, an initiative of the Queensland First Nations Tourism Council.
Dr Slaughter is a teaching focused academic in the Tourism discipline of UQ Business School. Her knowledge of tourism management is supported by substantial study in the area.
After travelling extensively, Lee returned to Australia to pursue tourism studies at The University of Queensland. In 2000 Lee was awarded her doctorate which focused on backpacker tourism. She continued researching in the area of tourism management, particularly as it relates to backpacker tourism. More recently Lee has moved to a teaching focused position and uses her previous experience to enhance her teaching at both undergraduate and masters levels.
David Solnet is a Professor of Service Management and Service Work in the UQ Business School. He is recognized internationally for his research, teaching and consulting, all focused on managing and leading service organizations, with particular emphasis on managing the employee-customer interface. His research focuses on frontline employees and the relationships between management practices, employee attitudes and firm performance. He is currently leading a new strategic initiative, creating UQ's first fully online Master's degree through a UQ partnership with edX, Master of Leadership and Innovation.
David is a sought after advisor to industry and government, specializing on business improvement, financial analysis, service quality and management development programs. He comes from a restaurant background, with over 18 years of experience including senior management roles in the USA (Brinker International, El Chico Group, Bennigan’s Restaurants and Olive Garden) and Australia (including six years as general manager of Bretts Wharf in Brisbane). He has consulted to many organizations, including Merlo Coffee, Cactus Jacks Restaurant Group, Aromas Noosa, Ricky’s River Bar, Locale Ristaurante, Pier Nine Restaurant and Oyster Bar, Mitchell Ogilvie Menswear and Baguette Restaurant.
David coleads the workforce research team in the tourism group at the UQ Business School and has been a principal investigator on a number of state and national projects including two ‘tourism employment plans’ as part of the Australian Commonwealth Government initiative to address employment challenges in regional areas in Australia; and has worked with Service Skills Australia on a number of projects centred around workforce development.
Professor Solnet has published over 50 academic journal articles, and his work consistently appears in the top journals in his field, such as the Journal of Service Management, Managing Service Quality (Journal of Service Theory and Practice), Annals of Tourism Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Travel Research and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research.
Professor Solnet is currently an academic partner seconded to the Division of Student Affairs, developing initiatives centered around improving student experience.
Dr Sun’s research addresses tourism sustainability, focusing on economic impacts and environmental footprinting. Her work on tourism economic impacts is to use the input-output modelling to provide quantitative estimates on jobs, income and GDP with respect to changes in national tourism policy, market development or special events and disasters. In addition, she also works on the environmental perspectives of travel behaviour, quantifying the tourism carbon footprint and tourism water footprint. She successfully constructed and analysed tourism impacts for individual countries (Taiwan, China, Japan, United States, and New Zealand) and provided the first detailed estimate of the global travel impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
She worked closely with federal and local administers, including Statistics Norway, Indonesia Ministry of Finance, Taiwan Ministry of the Interior Construction Agency, Taiwan Forestry Bureau, and the US National Park Service. Her research projects include cases with national tourism carbon emission inventory, tourism employment vulnerability, tourism marketing programs, and national park management.
Dr Sun has published in top academic journals including Nature Climate Change, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Before joining UQ from Taiwan in 2018, She had 9 consecutive research projects with the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) (equivalence to Australia Research Council), and 4 governmental grants. Dr Sun is currently the lead CI of the ARC Discovery Project that will set up the global tourism carbon emissions database and identify enablers for tourism decarbonization.
Dr Aaron Tkaczynski is a Senior Lecturer in both tourism and events in the School of Business in the Faculty of Business, Economics & Law. He has been employed at the University of Queensland in a research capacity since 2009. Since 2021 he has also had an extra-ordinary Associate Professor position in the Tourism Research in Economics, Environs and Society (TREES) department at North-West University in Potchefstroom in South Africa. Aaron's research expertise and experience stems from market segmentation modelling. He publishes within journals such as Tourism Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Annals of Tourism Research and the Journal of Travel Research. Dr Tkaczynski is also very interested in tourism seasonality, eco-certification, nature-based tourism, social marketing and small-scale festivals. Aaron is also a Christian and actively researches and volunteers for many Christian orientated events such as festivals and leadership conferences. Prior to academia, Aaron was employed in local government (Hervey Bay City Council, Redland Shire Council and the Local Government Association of Queensland).
Dr. Michael Turner is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Holding a PhD, a Bachelor of Business (First Class Honours), and a Graduate Certificate in Research Management, Dr. Turner excels in teaching, research, service, and student supervision. His commitment to academic excellence is evident in his superior teaching evaluations and extensive scholarly contributions. Dr. Turner has amassed a significant body of high-quality research. As at the start of 2024, he has nearly 30 journal articles, with 23 of these articles appearing in top-tier A* (5) and A-ranked (18) journals as per the Australian Business Dean's Council (ABDC) list.
Dr. Turner's research interests span strategic management accounting, corporate disclosure, ethical decision-making, and the integration of advanced technologies in accounting education.
As the Program Convenor for the Bachelor of Advanced Business with Honours program, Dr. Turner champions creativity, excellence, and respect, fostering an inclusive and respectful educational environment. His innovative teaching methods and active engagement with the academic and industry sectors underscore his dedication to educational excellence.
Dr. Turner has secured numerous research grants, from prestigious bodies such as Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ), Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ), and the German Research Foundation, demonstrating his capability in navigating the competitive funding landscape. His research projects, including studies on management accounting, capital budgeting, and the impact of digital changes on pricing, highlight his role as a leading figure in accounting research. His collaboration with industry and contributions to industry-centric platforms further amplify his impact, bridging academic insights and practical applications.
Dr. Turner's leadership extends beyond research and teaching; he serves on editorial advisory boards and acts as a reviewer for reputable journals, reflecting his commitment to upholding research quality and integrity.
Associate Professor Gabby Walters has a substantial background in tourism marketing with an emphasis on consumer psychology. Gabby has focused much of her research towards image and reputation management and in particular tourism market recovery following crises and disastrous events. She has conducted numerous consultancies and projects with tourism destinations from different parts of the world seeking to enhance or revitalise their reputations and regain trust among the tourism market as a result one or many critical events.
Her expertise also encompasses advanced methodological approaches to the study of tourist behaviour and in particular lab based research technologies. Gabby has a well-established publication record in tourism and hospitality and currently serves on several editorial boards. She currently serves as is the Editor in Chief for the Journal of Vacation Marketing, an ABDC A Ranked and Q1 Journal.
In 2017 Gabby was awarded the Centre of Australian Universities Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) Fellows Award. An esteemed accolade that recognises significant contributions to the tourism and hospitality field.
