From 8-9th July 2013, I had the pleasure, together with my colleagues Alessandro Inversini and Nicolas Gregori, to organise the first edition of the IFITT Doctoral Summer School: Vision of eTourism, hosted by Professor Dimitrios Buhalis at the Bournemouth University eTourismLab.
IFITT Doctoral Summer School 2013 – 40 participants from more than 10 countries, outside sunny Bournemouth University
The first IFITT Doctoral Summer School was a great success with more than 40
participants from more than 10 countris all over the world. The event was aimed at providing young researchers at early stages with the opportunity to discuss their research topics and receive useful advice from experienced researchers.
The sessions included a keynote presentation by Niall Winters from the University of
London about ‘The role of mobiles in supporting educational tourism’ and a number
of presentations about the PhD life and research methodologies given by
experienced researchers like Brigitte Stangl, Dimitrios Buhalis, Andrew Frew, Rodolfo
Baggio, Janet Dickinson and Hania Janta.
The main highlights of the event were a dynamic ‘Researcher Speed-Dating’ on Day
1 (July 8) where participants could introduce themselves to each other in a given
time, which was not only a fun activity but also provided the participants with a great
opportunity to explore opportunities for collaboration as well as a round table session
on Day 2 (July 9) where editors from famous academic journals like Alan Fyall
(Journal of Destination Marketing and Management), John Fletcher (International
Journal of Tourism Research) and Rodolfo Baggio (Current Issues in Tourism – Letters)
shared useful insights and suggestions about publishing research papers.
A core element of the workshop was the student paper presentations. In this session
the students had the possibility to present abstracts of their current research and
share their thoughts and initial results with peers and experienced researchers and
receive useful advice for improvement.
A collection of these abstracts can be found
in the proceedings of the IFITT Doctoral Summer School at:
http://ifitt.org/public/uploads/IFITT_DSS2013_Proceedings.pdf. All presentations of the
students and speakers are uploaded at: http://ifitt.org/home/view/summer_school.
All pictures of the summer school can be found at the IFITT Facebook page
(https://www.facebook.com/ifittorg) and on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifitt/).
