The pandemic has become an opportunity to stop, reflect and rethink what tourism and the leisure spectrum will be all about in the future. The paradigm shifts call for diversifying visitor experiences, considering sustainable alternatives, and moving from "mass tourism" and "over-tourism" to a "distributed tourism" that benefits a network of local community groups in both the formal and informal sectors. In this future, what kind of built environment/s do we envisage? As "designing" is a ubiquitous process that offers the vehicle to improve lives and experiences, what variety of design options and challenges do we consider? These, and many other questions, will be raised in the heart of the two-thousand-year-old spice trade – Muziris, Kerala. And of particular focus, based on this local context, the role of creativity, festivals, and biennales, in facilitating the "design" of transformations will be interrogated. It will be a shared dialogue and discourse through critical research and case studies between the Global South and North addressing all the 17 SDGs, with only eight years of the UN 2030 Agenda left!
UNESCO Chair on Inclusive Museums and Sustainable Heritage Development, Professor of Inclusive Cultural Leadership and Director, International Centre for Inclusive Cultural Leadership (ICICL), and Dean of Faculty Development and Leadership, Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India; Executive Director, International Institute for the Inclusive Museum, Australia/India/USA; UNITWIN-UNESCO Network – Tourism, Culture and Development, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; and Former Vice President, ICOM, Paris, and former President, ICOM of the Asia Pacific, Paris. (http://inclusivemuseums.org/index.php/executive-director)
The Seventh International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies featured plenary sessions by some of the world's leading thinkers and innovators in the field.
IAS., Additional Chief Secretary to Government of Kerala, Kerala, India
Director and UNESCO Representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives, and Sri Lanka
Provost, Anant National University, India
Full Professor of Architecture & Urbanism, University of Nevada, Founding Director, Interdisciplinary Urban Futures Lab, CEO, Future Cities Leadership Institute, USA
"Regenerative Design for Tourism"
UNESCO Chair on Water, Ports and Historic Cities, Professor and Head, Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
Managing Director of KTIL and Muziris Heritage Project, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala, India
Convener, Cultural Economics Round Table, Associate Professor, Anant National University, India
Convener, Cultural Tourism Round Table, Associate Professor, Anant National University, India
Convenor, Indigeneity in Contemporary Built Environment, Benny Kurikose & Associates; Faculty, Anant Fellowship, India
Convener, Tourism Communication, Associate Professor, Anant National University, India
For each conference, a small number of Emerging Scholar Awards are given to outstanding graduate students and emerging scholars who have an active research interest in the conference themes. 2022 Emerging Scholar Award recipients are as follows:
Jagiellonian University, Poland
University of Toronto, Canada
Florida International University, USA
Gujarat, India
Kerala, India
