Organised by an international network of tourism scholars interested in engaged, value-driven and transformative research that generates impact and empowers, TEFI conferences focus on seeking ways to activate change and empower engaged scholarship.
This year’s theme of storytelling, provided an interesting way of exploring critical and ethical issues in tourism and opened new avenues for conducting, reporting and disseminating tourism research.
The conference theme ‘Building our stories: Co-creating tourism futures in research and practice’ revolved around co-creation of knowledge and using storytelling to generate change in the industry, academia and beyond. It brought together academics, tourism educators and social entrepreneurs who debated questions about who has the right to tell stories, how can alternative stories become dominant, what is the value of collective storying and living stories, and is storytelling more than sensemaking?
Prof. Diane Dredge opening the conference
The Visitor Economy Research Group was represented by Dr. Agnieszka Rydzik who delivered the presentation: ‘Creating and sharing stories of work: from individual experience to collective reflection’. Focusing on experiences of students working part-time in tourism and hospitality, this paper explored the potential of engaging students in storytelling to help them develop into more reflective, critical and ethical future tourism practitioners.
Of interest was an exploration of how young people narrate their stories of work and how they make sense of the critical incidents that take place in their workplace. The paper also explored the potential of sharing these individually created stories collectively to foster group understanding of and critical refection on working conditions of student workers in tourism and hospitality.
Dr. Johan Edelheim delivering a keynote speech