Veni grant Dr. Dorina Maria Buda

The Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (nwo.nl) awarded a Veni grant to Dr Dorina Maria Buda Assistant Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in the department for Cultural Geography, University of Groningen. The amount of the grant 250,000 euros will contribute to examining ‘dark tourism’ in places of conflict and atrocity. In this project Dr Buda explores how dynamics of emotions and affects between tourists and local tourism stakeholders shape identity of places in conflict. The focus is on emotional tourism experiences in the Palestinian West Bank. This is highly needed not only to strengthen the research sub-field of dark tourism, but also to improve planning and development of tourism in conflict-affected areas in more socio-politically and culturally sustainable ways.

The award will also contribute to establishing tourism studies as a field of academic research in the Netherlands. In this respect Dr Buda together with Tourism Research Network Northern Netherlands (TOREN), which she has established in January 2015, will organise a series of workshops and symposia to create a shared intellectual environment and impetus to increase tourism research. The first such event in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Society will take place on 17 November at Groninger Museum, more info about the event here: http://www.rug.nl/research/sustainable-society/calendar/tourism-conference-