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Research Seminar Series - A Lonely Planet for Women Travelers

  • Wednesday, 30 October 2019
  • 4:00 PM GST
  • Middlesex University Dubai

We are pleased to invite you to our Wednesday Research Seminar. It will be held on 30 October from 4pm, at Middlesex University Dubai in the Oasis Theatre, Block 16, Knowledge Park.

Wednesday Research Seminar Series was launched in 2008, and has featured more than 250 presentations to date. The seminars provide a forum for researchers to share their work. Presenters include faculty from Middlesex University Dubai and other universities in the United Arab Emirates, as well as researchers from other global institutions. Dr. Heather will deliver seminar on:

“A Lonely Planet for Women Travelers”

Heather Jeffrey

Abstract

Writing for the Guardian, Linda Kinstler (2018) reported the censorship of advice for women travelers on TripAdvisor, especially when that advice relates to their personal safety. Much of the academic literature centred on women’s travel highlights their own responsibility in safeguarding themselves from dangers abroad. As such this paper aims to widen discussions from personal responsibility to institutional responsibility by honing in on the travel trade press and its promulgation of discourses on women’s travel. Acknowledging that Lonely Planet is an important brand in travel advice, but also that many tourists now turn to internet based advice, this research is centred on a discourse analysis (Foucault, 1972) of the Lonely Planet website’s advice for female travelers. The findings show how Lonely Planet (re)instates spatial segregation and assigns responsibility to potential victims while minimising the importance of harassment and disregarding women's feelings towards harassers.

Biography

Dr Heather Jeffrey completed her PhD at Middlesex University, London in 2017, her thesis is entitled A Discursive Analysis of Women’s Femininities within the Context of Tunisian Tourism. Heather joined Middlesex University, Dubai after having held faculty positions at the University of Bedfordshire, Middlesex University London, and the University of East London. Heather’s research interests centre on social inequality, qualitative methods, and gender studies and she was pleased to have been invited to become a member of the European Commission-funded International Network for Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities in 2016. More recently Heather has been invited to become an associate for the non-profit organisation Equality in Tourism, she is also a dissertation reviewer for the Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society. In addition to creating scholarly outputs, Heather has written for the Huffington Post on issues related to tourism, gender and academia.

We look forward to welcoming you at the seminar.

If you are interested in presenting at one of our future seminars, or would like to recommend someone, please contact:  [email protected]