NS34 Workshop 37

Academic conferences are designed to foster exchange, yet they often reproduce intellectual comfort zones. Scholars gravitate toward familiar theories, methods, and networks, inadvertently reinforcing disciplinary echo chambers. In a field confronting climate change, social justice imperatives, geopolitical instability, and profound societal transformation, tourism research requires spaces that actively surface dissent, uncertainty, and under-articulated perspectives. 

This interactive workshop responds to the symposium theme Tourism in a Changing World: An Active Agent for Good? by shifting attention from tourism as an external object of study to our roles as researchers embedded within and shaping the field. If tourism is to act as an agent for good, its knowledge production by researchers’ practices must also be open to reflexivity, critique, and epistemic diversity. 

The workshop employs an anonymous, participatory format designed to enable candid expression across hierarchies and career stages. Participants anonymously submit statements reflecting thoughts they rarely voice publicly, such as methodological doubts, theoretical critiques, institutional tensions, or provocative opinions/observations.  
These statements are shared anonymously and collectively reflected upon through structured, interactive dialogue.  Participants also cast anonymous agree/disagree votes on each statement, allowing hidden patterns of consensus or disagreement to surface without social pressure. Seeing that others quietly share one’s view can give contributors the confidence to voice perspectives they might otherwise withhold. 

Rather than centring consensus, the session treats agreement, disagreement, and ambivalence as productive material. Patterns of resonance and divergence become entry points for examining blind spots, taken-for-granted assumptions, and power dynamics within tourism scholarship. The goal is not resolution but heightened collective awareness. 

By convening scholars across disciplinary and career boundaries, the workshop aims to cultivate a space of intellectual courage and constructive discomfort. In doing so, it seeks to expand the range of perspectives considered legitimate within tourism research and to encourage more reflexive, critical, and imaginative engagements with tourism’s role in a rapidly changing world. 

Creating a safe space and allowing discussion we wish all participants to join the ‘game’ without bystanders. So, please be expected to take part in the exercise if you join the session.