Research supervision for your PhD
Supervisory expertise spans a range of disciplinary approaches to the PhD study of tourism, hospitality and events. These include human geography, development studies, sociology, anthropology, marketing and business, cultural studies and political science. Much of our work has real-world application and staff are well-connected to a variety of international development agencies (i.e. UNWTO, World Bank, UN), public, private and third sectors organisations.
Research supervision will normally comprise two members of academic staff with a maximum of three. Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional supervisor from another school, another research institution, or an external partner from the tourism and hospitality industries.
You will establish your supervisor from the early stages of application and they will support you throughout your programme of study, helping you to carry out your research and prepare for the next stage of your career.
Successful applicants have invariably had support with their application from one of our academics. We suggest you approach a suitable academic staff member with relevant research interests before progressing with your application.
We welcome approaches for PhD supervision across many aspects of tourism, hospitality and events research. Fields of recent pursuit have included: investigations of human resource issues, sociology and social issues, food and consumer behaviour, digital technologies and social media. The following list of interests will serve as a guide to some of the department’s outlook and expertise:
- sustainable, responsible, ethical and community-based tourism
- tourism - policy, planning, development and tourism management
- globalisation, migration and mobility
- sexuality and gender in tourism, hospitality and events
- niche and special interest tourism - particularly cruise tourism; sport tourism, family tourism, rural tourism, nature-based tourism
- tourism and development in developed, developing and emerging countries
- tourism and social justice
- tourism environmental justice (i.e. animal rights in tourism)
- travel philanthropy
- consumer behaviour in tourism
- destination management and marketing
- tourism impacts management
- visual and visuality; culture and media, popular films and tourism
- heritage, landscape and memorialisation
- identities and culture, embodiment, materiality and the senses
- international events and festival
- subculture, counterculture and spectacle in tourism, hospitality and events.
Research skills and research training
The independent research programme is balanced and enhanced with a range of support from our academic community. You and your fellow postgraduate researchers will have the opportunity to attend and present at regular seminar sessions with guests from across the world of business management research. The PhD programme will give you the opportunity to build research skills as well as developing transferable skills essential for modern business environments.
As a member of the Brighton Doctoral College, you will benefit from regular opportunities on a training programme devised for postgraduate researchers, covering research methods and transferable skills including employability. Attendance at appropriate workshops within this programme is encouraged, as is contribution to the schools’ various seminar series. Academic and technical staff also provide more subject-specific training.
Postgraduate degree resources for tourism and hospitality
You will benefit from access to international research resources. A contemporary range of electronic resources is available via the university’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within campus libraries. The library services are connected to national and international collections and students also have the option of inter-library loans.
We are based in the recently-built Elm House, a five-storey building at the university's modern campus in the bustling and progressive tourist city of Brighton and Hove.
Our research centres
You will be based on the university’s Moulsecoomb campus, in the recently-built Elm House, where the School of Business and Law nurtures a vibrant community of research staff, which PhD students join as active members.
As a PhD candidate in tourism and hospitality, you will have the opportunity to be a member of our Research Excellence Groups (REGs), the most relevant to our tourism and hospitality PhD students being the Tourism, Inclusion, Events and Society Research Excellence Group which brings together academics from tourism and events-focused academia with related social science disciplines.
Whatever your area of research, there are opportunities to connect across the university's wide range of research in premium departments, with regular invitations to the PhD community from related disciplinary interests fostered in our university-wide research centres (COREs) and research groups (REGs).
Our tourism and hospitality research student body
The University of Brighton has welcomed home and international students for PhDs in tourism, hospitality and event management over many years.
Our current and recent PhD students are exploring a range of topics in relation to:
- the role of politics in tourism
- the relations between tourism and poverty alleviation
- critical perspectives on travel philanthropy
- the influence of the perception of risk on consumer decision-making in ocean cruising
- post-conflict destination branding and national identity construction
- the role of sport tourism in image destination formation in the Middle East
- tourism development and community involvement in Saudi Arabia.
Many of our graduates have progressed into jobs in academia, becoming lecturers or postdoctoral researchers, while others work in commercial consultancy, international development or international travel, tourism, hospitality and events operations.