Keynote Speakers

Dr. Tazim Jamal

Dr. Tazim Jamal is a Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University, Texas, USA. Her primary research areas are sustainable tourism, collaborative tourism planning, and cultural heritage management. She is also interested in methodological issues in tourism research, particularly interpretive research. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to tourism impacts, international tourism and heritage tourism. Dr. Jamal is the author of Justice and Ethics in Tourism (published Feb. 2019 by Routledge) and is co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Studies (2009). She is on the editorial board of nine peer-reviewed journals and an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Tourism, 2nd ed.
For more on her research, see her Google Scholar Profile @: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Zuaq0fsAAAAJ&view_op=list_works

WEB: https://rpts.tamu.edu/people/jamal-dr-tazim/

Tony Wheeler

Tony and Maureen Wheeler circa 1972 with the first Lonely Plate travel guidebook across Asia on the cheap (Source: www.tonywheeler.com.au)

A trek along Asia's 'hippie trail' in 1972 led to Tony and Maureen Wheeler creating travel publisher Lonely Planet, and to the New York Times describing him as 'the trailblazing patron saint of the world's backpackers and adventure travelers'. Wheeler has been involved with the Planet Wheeler Foundation's work on more than fifty projects in the developing world and the establishment of Melbourne's Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. Melbourne University Press (MUP) published Tony’s latest book On Travel in 2018. His next book, Islands of Australia (National Library of Australia) will be published in 2019. His enthusiasm for trekking the globe is contagious: it is impossible to read On Travel without scouring for deals, searching for unusual places, and deciding to leave the luggage behind in an escape to the unfamiliar.

Dr. Christine R. Yano

Christine R. Yano, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai`i, has conducted research on Japan and Japanese Americans with a focus on popular culture. Her publications include Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song (Harvard, 2002), Crowning the Nice Girl; Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture in Hawaii’s Cherry Blossom Festival (Hawaii, 2006), Airborne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways (Duke, 2011), and Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty and its Trek Across the Pacific (Duke, 2013).

During 2014-2015, she served as Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, resulting in a book project with Asian American undergraduates there entitled Straight A’s: Asian American Academic Achievement. Her current research project focuses on the transnational circulation of the Hawaiian-Portuguese `ukulele, as instrument and source of music-making in Japan. She currently serves as President-Elect of the Association for Asian Studies, and will become President in March 2020.