Contemporary trends in cultural heritage tourism

• To provide the ability to analyse and debate the acceptance of sustainable tourism, critically and systematically review and report on relevant bibliography in the selected field ;
• To update students, through open discussion and presentation among peers, with the contemporary research trends in the field of the social and performative construction of cultural landscapes
• To train students to critically analyse, understand and use concepts, new information and ideas employed in the cultural tourism context
• To consolidate the holistic approach to research on tourist places

• Seminars, open discussions in different fields of knowledge involved in culture and society, focusing on contemporary research perspectives and trends in the field of cultural heritage tourism.
• In particular: urban populations, citizenship, place transformations, power, negotiation, mobilities, colonialism, gender aspects, postfordism

• Student’s capacity to pursue independent bibliographical research within broad and complex range of topics inherent to heritage studies
• Publication and communication potential, learning interactive –scientific discussion
• Successful written and public presentation of research proposals focusing on critical presentation of bibliographical background related to the contemporary research trends

Selected literature may differ each year and will be given accordingly to the selected thematic field.

• Active participation in classroom • Written report

Associate tenured professor at University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain (Department of Geography) and Research Director of the Science and Technology Park of Tourism of Tarragona. He has worked in the past at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (where he obtained his Ph.D in Economics in 2002), Autonomous University of Barcelona and at the IULM - Milan. He is the author of several publications in international academic journals and collections. His research interests range from education to economy and tourism geography and urban planning culture. He is regularly involved in national and European projects on these issues, as a member or leader of international networks or as an independent consultant. He lives in Barcelona since 2003 and is a social and political activist on issues related to global citizenship and urban democracy.
Main references for the course:
Russo, A.P. and Scarnato, A. (2017). “Barcelona in common”: a new urban regime for the 21st century tourist city? Journal of Urban Affairs. DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2017.1373023.

Den Hoed, W., and Russo, A.P. (2017). Professional travellers and tourist practices. Annals of Tourism Research 63: 60-72.

Russo, A.P. and Richards, G. (Eds) (2016). Reinventing the local in tourism. Channel View Publications, Clevedon. ISBN: 978-1-84541-569-3

Russo, A.P. and J. van der Borg (2010). An urban policy framework for culture-oriented economic development: lessons from the Netherlands. Urban Geography 31(5): 668-690.

Russo, A.P. and A. Arias Sans (2009). Student communities and landscapes of creativity: how Venice – ‘the world's most touristed city’ – is changing. European Urban and Regional Studies 16(2): 175-189.