The Tourism Studies Working Group was founded in the spring of 2003 by UC Berkeley graduate students Stephanie Hom, Naomi Leite, and Charles Carroll. It has since grown into an interdisciplinary network of more than 50 scholars throughout Northern California. In addition, the Working Group has established productive ties with similar research groups in England, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, and Brazil.  Support comes from the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities Working Groups program, as well as the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly, the Department of Anthropology, and other research units on the UC Berkeley campus.

The Tourism Studies Working Group provides a forum in which faculty and graduate students from a wide range of disciplines can exchange ideas, circulate and/or informally present works in progress, hear from visiting scholars, and receive feedback on their research. Rather than a discipline in its own right, we see tourism studies as a node at which numerous disciplines intersect and cross-fertilize. We hope to promote and sustain a multidisciplinary approach to tourism so as to enrich the academic discourse on tourism and travel as objects of study on the Berkeley campus and beyond.

In addition to its regular colloquium series, the Tourism Studies Working Group has hosted a number of symposia (e.g., Tourism and Indigeneity, 2008, Examining Tourism in Southern Africa, 2008, Tourism, History, and Mexico, 2008, and States of Tourism: Mexico and Cuba, 2007), and organized two major international conferences (Tourism Imaginaries, 2011, and On Voyage, 2005). Our members have also collaborated on publications, presentations, and conference panels.  We are also frequently approached by media outlets, independent scholars and filmmakers, and other research programs for commentary on contemporary tourism.

If you are in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and would like to become involved in our activities on the UC Berkeley campus, write to us at tourism@berkeley.edu. If you are seeking post-doctoral/visiting scholar affiliation with the TSWG, please read our visiting scholar information page before writing.

Executive Committee, 2016-2017
Dr. Nelson Graburn, co-chair
Swetha Vijayakumar, co-chair
Dr. Mahlon W.L. Chute, co-chair, webmaster and newsletter editor

Core Group Members

Affiliated Researchers and Visiting Scholars

Upcoming Events