Lynch, Paul

McIntosh, Alison

English

Digital Commons @ TRU Library (Thompson Rivers University)

Critical Tourism Studies Proceedings 
Volume 2019 Article 91 
2019 
Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality! 
Alison McIntosh 
Auckland University of Technology, NZ 
Paul Lynch 
Edinburgh Napier University, UK 
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McIntosh, Alison and Lynch, Paul (2019) "Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality!," Critical 
Tourism Studies Proceedings: Vol. 2019 , Article 91. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cts-proceedings/vol2019/iss1/91 
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Alison McIntosh 
Professor of Hospitality & 
Tourism 
Auckland University of 
Technology, NZ 
Born and raised in the South-West of England, Alison earned her Bachelor 
of Tourism Studies (First Class Hons) from Cardiff Metropolitan University 
and her PhD from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. After emigrating 
to New Zealand in 1997, Professor McIntosh assumed academic positions 
at The University of Otago, Lincoln University, and most recently as 
Professor of Tourism at The University of Waikato in New Zealand. She 
also holds a Visiting Professor position at Edinburgh Napier University, 
Scotland. 
 
Alison’s research focuses on critical understandings of the tourism and 
hospitality experience, with particular focus on issues of accessibility, social 
justice and advocacy. A central theme of her research is that experiential, 
qualitative, and social justice analyses reveal subjective, emotional, and 
neglected aspects of tourism experiences, prioritising otherwise unheard 
voices, personal dimensions, and tourism in marginalised contexts. Alison is 
Founding Co-Editor of the international journals Hospitality & Society 
(Intellect) and Hospitality Insights (Tuwhera) and serves on the editorial 
boards of other leading tourism journals. She is also Co-Founder of the 
outreach network, Network for Community Hospitality, that supports not-
for-profits and community stakeholders in tackling some of New Zealand’s 
pressing social issues. 
CTS 8 Keynote Address 
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McIntosh and Lynch: Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality!
Published by Digital Commons @ TRU Library, 2019
Paul Lynch 
Professor of Critical Hospitality & 
Tourism 
Edinburgh Napier University, UK 
Paul’s research focuses upon critical and sociological perspectives on 
hospitality and tourism. Exploring commercial homes has led to his main 
areas of publication, concentrating on small hospitality and tourism firm 
entrepreneurs, including women micro-entrepreneurs, social enterprises, 
tourism destination networks and networking, advanced qualitative research 
methods (sociological impressionism and sociological expressionism), 
hospitality, and space. Deepening understanding of commercial home 
enterprises has drawn attention to the interactions between host and guest, 
host and home, the nature of hospitality, and how the study of hospitality 
sheds light on people, work and society. Paul’s most recent research focuses 
upon understanding the experience of mundane welcome. With colleagues 
in the UK, US, and NZ, Paul pioneered the launch of a new intentionally 
interdisciplinary journal Hospitality & Society, which seeks to provide a 
hospitable meeting-ground for discussion, exchange of ideas, and advancing 
theoretical developments relating to perspectives on hospitality. Paul serves 
on the editorial boards of the following journals: International Journal of 
Hospitality and Tourism Administration; Tourism Review; Research in 
Hospitality Management. Paul previously worked at the University of 
Strathclyde and Queen Margaret University. He is a Fellow of the Institute 
of Hospitality, former Chair (Research) of the Council for Hospitality 
Management Education, Visiting Professor at the University of Stenden, 
Hotelschool The Hague, and Auckland University of Technology. 
CTS 8 Keynote Address 
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Critical Tourism Studies Proceedings, Vol. 2019 [2019], Art. 91
https://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cts-proceedings/vol2019/iss1/91
Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities 
of Hospitality! 
 
The inaugural Critical Tourism Studies Conference in 2005 in 
Dubrovnik was the catalyst that kick-started conversations between us 
around the relatively inhospitable nature of most previous academic 
hospitality research. Despite our different fields of research, we shared a 
commonality in our quest for a hospitable academy of hope, and the 
possibility for a hospitable society—noting, in effect, that hospitality is 
society. Since CTS 2005, we have shared in a collaborative journey to 
challenge the existing commercial focus of most previous hospitality 
management research, and we established the Hospitality & Society 
journal to encourage interdisciplinary understandings and a richer critical 
framing of the study of hospitality. In this keynote address, we welcome 
you to a critical and hopeful dialogue about hospitality, moralities, 
knowledge, creativity, the world, and the self. We frame our talk around 
the ideology of ‘welcome’ and ‘hospitality’ as a social relation and a lens 
for the examination of society. We discuss our respective research on 
mundane welcome in the everyday, and in the welcome for refugees and 
asylum seekers, to illustrate how we believe hospitality, seen as the 
unconditional ideal of welcome, can give us hope for a better, fairer, 
more just world. 
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McIntosh and Lynch: Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality!
Published by Digital Commons @ TRU Library, 2019


Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality!

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Welcome to the Hopeful Possibilities of Hospitality!

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