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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. Prior to academia, Dr. Buning 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. Although he is an expert in survey research design and analysis, his research methodology speciality is in mixed methods (i.e., combining data sources and types) tailored to the research question at hand. He is regularly featured in the media and publishes on the topics of active transport, sport tourism, and event management.

Interested in working on research, teaching, or consulting projects? Please get in touch!

Dr. Mark Hickman is the TAP Chair and Professor of Transport Engineering within the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland. Prof. Hickman has taught courses and performed research in public transit planning and operations, travel demand modelling, and traffic engineering. His areas of research interest and expertise include public transit planning and operations, urban transportation planning and modelling, and the development of sustainable transport innovations and policies.

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.

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 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).