13 September
Local Date: Sep 13 2025 |
Local Time: 5:00 am - 6:30 am
![]() |
Dr. Rastegar is a researcher and academic with a multidisciplinary background in environmental sciences and tourism management. His research is positioned at the forefront of justice-oriented sustainability transitions, environmental conservation, and regenerative tourism. His work critically examines how tourism systems can be reimagined to support inclusive, equitable, and regenerative futures at local, national, and global levels. Dr. Rastegar has successfully led and completed several large-scale international, multidisciplinary projects, collaborating with scholars worldwide. His research has advanced climate justice in tourism policy and practice and contributed to conceptualising justice in tourism development. In addition to his work in urban destinations, he has conducted influential research in protected areas and national parks, exploring human–nonhuman relationships through the lenses of ecological and social justice. Recognised as a thought leader in the field, Dr. Rastegar has been invited to deliver keynote and invited talks at major international conferences, including the UN World Tourism Conference, where he addressed themes of justice and sustainability transitions. Through his scholarship and advocacy, he aims to support more just, resilient, and ecologically attuned pathways for tourism futures. |
![]() |
Dr Stroma Cole is a Reader at the University of Westminster. She combines her academic career with action research and consultancy, and she is co-director of the charity Equality in Tourism, transforming gender relations in destinations and tourism organisations. Stroma is a leading authority on tourism and gender relations. Stroma has a long history of working on small islands particularly in Indonesia. She is best known for her tourism and water nexus research in Bali a longitudinal action research project. Stroma is an activist researcher critiquing the consequences of tourism development, in particular the overuse of water by hotels and the consequences for local women. She has over 60 publications, is an Associate Editor for Annals of Tourism Research and on the editorial board at Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Geographies. |
![]() |
Raoul V. Bianchi is a Reader/Associate Professor in Political Economy in the Department of Marketing, International Business and Tourism at Manchester Metropolitan University. His main research interests include the political economy of international tourism, tourism geopolitics and citizenship, tourism work and labour relations and the transition to tourism economies beyond capitalism with a particular focus on southern Europe and the Mediterranean. He is an Associate Editor at Annals of Tourism Research and serves on the editorial board of Tourism Planning and Development and the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. He has been closely involved in campaigns for tourism and socioecological justice and was previously a member of the executive council of former UK NGO, Tourism Concern. |
![]() |
Professor David A. Fennell, PhD, Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, Brock University. Fennell researches mainly in the areas of ecotourism, tourism ethics, animal ethics, and sustainable tourism. He has published widely in these areas and in all of the field’s top journals, and has written several books, including, for example, Ecotourism (5th edition), Ecotourism Programme Planning, Tourism Ethics (2nd edition), Codes of Ethics in Tourism, Tourism and Animal Ethics, and Sustainable Tourism: Principles, Contexts, and Practices. A major thrust of his research involves the use of theory from other disciplines to gain traction on many of tourism’s most persistent problems. Fennell is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Ecotourism, is on the boards of many academic journals, is the editor of a book series by Routledge on tourism ethics, and is the editor of two Routledge Handbooks on tourism: Tourism and the environment, and Ecotourism |
![]() |
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is Adjunct Associate Professor with Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, University of Waterloo, Visiting Professor Centre for Research and Innovation in Tourism, Taylor’s University of Malaysia and Adjunct with the Business Unit, University of South Australia. She has worked with industry, community and non-profits on projects that have worked at the cutting edge of just and sustainable tourism. She is the co-editor of the recent books Socialising Tourism: Rethinking Tourism for Social and Ecological Justice (2022) and The Local Turn in Tourism: Empowering Communities (2023). |
![]() | Raymond Rastegar Moderator |
![]() | Stroma Cole Panelist |
![]() | Raoul V. Bianchi Panelist |
![]() | David A. Fennell Panelist |
![]() | Freya Higgins-Desbiolles Panelist |