The PhD Responsible Tourism Management programme at Leeds Met is tailored to suit the needs of action-oriented researchers wanting to draw on theoretical knowledge and rigour to change industry practice. We are currently working with 10 PhD students to advance knowledge on different aspects of responsible tourism applied to both large and small firms, protected areas and policy makers, in developing and developed countries, in a co-ordinated and team based effort to deliver world class research in responsible tourism.
We have limited spaces for self funded full time students to be based in Leeds to join our team. You can access a tailor-made programme of responsible tourism and research training from our masters, university wide research methods and our own research training programme run together with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change. This gives you the platform to prepare your own research topic, research the relevant literature, justify your methodology and the relevance of your results, discuss in writing and publicly the meaning and application of your results. We encourage all of our PhD students to use their PhD to become more employable and develop a range of industry relevant reaearch and analytical skills, enage in industry-commissioned research as part of a team, and present in front of academic peers and industry.
To be considered send us a one page proposal on your aims and objectives, data collection and analysis methods, informed by the academic literature and industry reports that have shaped your thinking.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2008
 Fernando Correia has graduated in Biology in 1997 and in 2002 has completed a MSc in Ecology, both degrees from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Fernando has a professional background on local sustainable development and environmental education, having worked for 4 years (2000-4) on a regional non-governmental organization for development in Portugal. His main research interests are the role of nature-based tourism as a sustainable development tool and that’s why he chose to study the “European Charter for Sustainable Development”, from Europarc Federation.
The aim of his PhD is to assess the effectiveness of the Charter in implementing sustainable tourism’s principles inside European protected areas and to identify the determinant variables for a successful implementation of such principles. For this purpose, his research will focus on the building of a sustainable tourism indicators’ framework for the context of protected areas, and on the study of collaborative approaches developed between parks’ authorities and tourism stakeholders. During his research he has contributed to writing a sustainable tourism development strategy for Quirimbas National Park, Mozambique, for WWF Mozambique as part of an ICRT team.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2010
 Louise holds a Mphil. in Environment and Development from Cambridge University (1997) and a BA (Hons.) in Geography from Liverpool University (1992). She has ten years international experience in tourism, mostly in community-based tourism development. She has worked in East and Southern Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique) and the Caribbean. Clients have included the British Airways (BA) Environment Programme and British Airways Holidays (BAH), European Union (EU), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Africa Safari Lodge (ASL) Programme.
Louise began her PhD in January 2007 and is interested in the transferability of fair trade concepts to tourism. She is exploring trade relationships between community tourism producers and distribution channels (e.g. tour operators) in less developed countries. Publications: Working Paper: Holland, J., Burian M. and Dixey, L. (2003) Tourism in Poor Rural Areas: Diversifying the Product and Dispersing the Benefits in Rural Uganda and the Czech Republic. Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Pro-Poor Tourism Papers 2. London: ODI. www.propoortourism.org.uk/12_rural_areas.pdf
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2008
 After completing his BA and M.Sc in hospitailty and tourism from Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt, the university employed him as teaching assistant. He went on to win a competitive scholarship from the Egyptian government to study for a PhD in Environmental responsibility in Egypt’s hospitality industry. His main interest is to study how the environmental agenda has influenced the hospitality industry in Egypt. In particular, resort hotels in the Red Sea and Sinai. He has examined the behaviour of hospitality marketing towards the natural environment and how hospitality marketers integrate environmental issues into marketing and management strategies.
From this he has developed typologies of behaviour and theorise on the reasons, meanings and purposes of such behaviour. A framework for analysis the different typologies of environmental marketing strategies in the hospitality operations was used and further tested through a detailed survey and case studies. During this studies Mohammed has participated in consultancy for EURAid to develop a sustainable tourism development strategy for South Sinai, as part of a team from PA Consulting.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2010
 Bethany George has recently graduated with a First Class Honours BA degree in Tourism combined with Public Relations from the College of St. Mark and St. John, Plymouth. She was academically active during her undergraduate course, co-presenting at the 3rd Tourism Industry & Education Symposium, Finland and the Periphery and Policy International Conference, Truro. She also worked on the organising committee of the latter conference, which was co-hosted by The College of St. Mark and St. John, Cornwall County Council and The Royal Anthropological Institute. Bethany has also worked on several research projects since completing her degree.
Her PhD research intends to look at conceptualising and theorising on the relation between tourism and social exclusion, with application to South West Cornwall. 2006 with Katherine Alder ‘The Interaction of tourism and culture in the periphery of Cornwall’ presented at Periphery and Policy International Conference, New County Hall, Truro, Cornwall. 2005 with Katherine Alder ‘A critique of economic regeneration in relation to cultural change and continuity in Cornwall’ presented at 3rd Tourism Industry & Education Symposium, Jyvaskyla, Finland.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2010
 Ko Koens has been involved in sustainable tourism for over 5 years. He holds a MA in Environmental studies (2003) and a MSc in Social Pyschology (2004), both from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. After finishing his studies he worked as sustainable (tourism) researcher and communication consultant.The main goal of his PhD, which started in 2007, is to explore systematically to what extent (pro-poor) tourism initiatives can be structurally integrated into local and global tourism networks.
At the moment the lack of integration of local tourism products and initiatives can negatively impact the potential beneficial impact of (pro-poor) tourism. The research helps reveal problems and challenges in a practical and multidisciplinary way by focussing. In this way it will assist in the understanding of convergences or divergences of tourism networks.Publications: Koens, J.F., Miranda, M.A., Dieperink, C. (forthcoming), Ecotourism as a development strategy; experiences from Costa Rica. Environment, development and Sustainability.Conference paper: Koens, J.F. (2006) The Influence of Social Capital on the Tourism Industry. Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Pretoria, 2-3 October, 2006
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2007
 Marianna Kornilaki studied at Bradford College for a HND in International Travel and Tourism Management before joining the BA (Hons) Managing International Tourism course at Leeds Metropolitan University. Her undergraduate research focused on sustainable development undertaken by tour operators in terms of their supply chains and the co-operation with the destination and she graduated in 2003 with a first class degree.
Her postgraduate research will develop a conceptual framework to investigate the attitudes and the responses of the small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) in Crete to the challenges of sustainable tourism. The research aims to offer an understanding and explanation of the behaviour of SMTEs to sustainability, and identify the challenges they experience in their attempts to implement sustainable practices in their everyday operations. The findings will help public authorities, non-governmental organisations and tourism suppliers such as tour operators to understand the needs of small- and medium-sized companies and to encourage them to work together towards achieving sustainable tourism development.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2010
 Adam Richardson has enjoyed extensive experience within tourism having worked across North America, Europe, Asia and The Middle East in the fields of Adventure Tourism, Educational Tourism and mainstream Tour Operations. These years of hands-on experience have given Adam a unique insight into a wide range of tourism markets in both developed and developing countries. Academically, Adam has a strong background in economics, holding a BA (Hons) Economics with German from The University of Nottingham (2003) with particular focus on game theoretic modelling. Extended placements within accountancy and market research, along with 18 months corporate experience with a Danish multinational company, have given Adam a well-rounded understanding the major issues facing modern corporations. Adam is in the first year of his PhD which focuses on ethical consumerism and its applications within the field of tourism. The research looks at consumer motivation in purchasing tourism products from tour operators with a strong alignment with Responsible Tourism principles, as well as investigating the on-tour experience and how it impacts on future purchasing decisions.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2008
 Ana Rita Sampaio has a degree in Environmental Engineering from Faculty of Science and Technology of New University of Lisbon, Portugal. After the degree, Ana enrolled on a professional internship, promoted by the Nature Conservation Agency (Portugal), where was responsible to make a report on Sustainable Indicators for Protected Areas. Her professional background is on environmental consultancy (2001 2004) in a environmental consultancy company, where was responsible for the implementation and management of the company’s Quality Management System (ISO 9001:2000) and for the development of Environmental Impact Reports, Monitoring Projects and Strategic Evaluation Studies.
Tourism SMEs contribute around 70% to the total pollution produced by tourism industry, making urgent a profound transformation of business attitudes and behaviour towards sustainable tourism development. Ana’s research interests are related to this issue, particularly on the conditions that should underlie the learning process of sustainable businesses practices among SMEs, as well as the learning strategies adopted by them.Her PhD aims to understand how networks and networking approach can be a useful tool to foster accommodation SMEs to learn how to adopt sustainable business practices, on a continually basis. Therefore, the research outcome will be the development of a model to identify and explain learning profiles of accommodation SMEs on adopting sustainable business practices. Moreover, it will be also explored the reasons underlying potential differences among SMEs’ learning profiles and the circumstances required to develop SMEs as learning organisations, within a networking context.
PhD - Year of Graduation: Target 2007
 Karen Schwartz is teacher at Nottingham University, after studying for her PhD for three years and doing consultancy as part of the Tourlink project (EU LIFE funding). This gives her research a practical, industry-based focus, while also developing theoretical understanding. Her PhD examines how tour operators can work with suppliers to improve environmental, economic and socio-cultural performance. This is known as ‘sustainable supplier development’ and is a key component of corporate social responsibility practices.
Tour operators use a wide variety of suppliers including accommodation, transport, excursion, ground handlers, and food and craft. The entire supply chain needs to be managed to serve the business interests of operators and wider stakeholder interests. The outcome of the PhD will provide understanding of how tour operators are working with suppliers for sustainability, and the challenges and opportunities faced in developing these initiatives in the future. PUBLICATIONS: Tapper, R., Font, X., Schwartz. K. & Kornilaki, M. ‘The challenges of sustainable supply chain management in a service sector: the tourism experience’ Business Strategy and the Environment, forthcoming. Schwartz, K., Tapper, R, Font, X. ‘A framework for sustainable supply chain management in tour operations’ Journal of Sustainable Tourism, forthcoming
PhD - Year of Graduation: 2002
 Anna’s doctoral research saw the development the Sustainable Nature-Based Tourism Assessment Toolkit (SUNTAT) – designed to address the environmental, socio-cultural and economic sustainability of nature-based tourism enterprises. Since then she has published extensively and conducted varied consultancy projects mostly in Southern Africa.
MRes - Year of Graduation: Target 2009
 Gabor is Programme Officer at the Sustainable Development of Tourism Department of the World Tourism Organization. He combines his full time job and heavy international travel schedule with distance learning study for his MRes (eventually progressing to PhD) on Evaluating the impacts of tourism development in poverty reduction: A supply chain and destination analysis approach.
His research will combine quantitative and qualitative inquiry and evaluation techniques to develop in-depth understanding of tourism impacts, and their implications on policy, supply chain, and local livelihood issues as well. The research will incorporate the UNWTO methodologies and expertise developed in the field of sustainable tourism indicators, as key tools for tourism planning, management and monitoring processes.
PhD - Year of Graduation: 1997
 Dr Matt Walpole is Programme Co-ordinator, Biodiversity and Human Needs at Fauna & Flora International in Cambridge. His PhD thesis (1994-1997) was a model, multidisciplinary study of tourism in Komodo National Park, Indonesia, that contributed to the development of DFID’s stakeholder guidelines for nature-based tourism. Matt completed his PhD as part of the Tourism, Conservation and Sustainable Development research project directed by Harold Goodwin at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent.
Matt subsequently worked as a project manager and consultant on a range of international projects that seek to integrated conservation and local development through tourism, using a process of research, capacity-building and implementation as a senior research associate based at the University of Kent. Specialising in nature-based tourism as a tool for biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation, his work over the past decade has focused on a range of tropical developing countries in Africa and Asia.
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