COST
TObeWELL – Tourism, Wellbeing and Ecosystem Services
Key research objectives are:
- To develop inter-disciplinary research capacity across the key knowledge areas – tourism, wellbeing and ecosystem services
- To explore the opportunities for cross-disciplinary methodological approaches and promote knowledge transfer between different empirical traditions.
- To provide a core body of knowledge that can support both the continuation of wider research collaborations.
The 3 main activities in the workplan and budget are as follows:
- Two main meetings of the MC and the Work Groups. The first will be in Exeter during April 2013 and the second in the Netherlands during September 2013. The Exeter meeting will take place over three nights due to the distance of the location from the main points of international travel. The MC will meet on the first afternoon to discuss and plan the year’s programme in more detail. The Working Groups will hold theme meetings with invited speakers, one for each working group. In addition there is a planned field class to the Eden Project to study these sustainable attraction and educational project. We will also meet with colleagues from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health which is funded in part by the EU. The second, main conference for the Action will be in Wageningen, The Netherlands. This will be a major show case event around the theme ‘Exploring the systemic links between ecosystem services and wellbeing in tourism’ taking place over 3 nights. There will be an MC meeting before the conference along with 4 Work Group sessions. 4 outside keynote speakers will be invited.
- During Year 1 – 5 STSMs will be funded and these will be advertised on our web site which is currently under construction.
- There will be a training school held in November. This will fund 12 PhD students to attend the event.
- Extra funding will be used to develop the activities at the working groups. These will be organized as individual meetings in the end of January 2014. The WGs all have created research agenda’s and these will be enhanced in the forthcoming meetings.