Advisory Panel (STPP)

Mr Liam Prince

Mr Liam Prince, ACICIS Consortium Director, is chair of the STPP Advisory Panel.

Associate Professor Paul Battersby

Paul Battersby is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Global and Language Studies, in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. He leads the Global Studies, Languages and Translating and Interpreting disciplines with direct responsibility for 34 full-time academic staff and for over 1200 students spread across the VET Diploma of Interpreting, Advanced Diploma of Translating programs, and the higher education Diploma of Languages, Bachelor of Arts (International Studies), Master of International Development and Master of Translating and Interpreting.

He has pioneered the integration of Professional and Work Intergrated Learning pedagogies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, consulting regularly with advisors from government, nongovernment and corporate organisations.

His teaching and research interests span globalization, global risk, global security, global crime, governance, border security, and Australia’s engagement with Asia. He has published numerous book chapters and journal articles on topics as diverse as globalization and technology, global society, Australian mining history, organized crime, global politics and law. He is the author of, The Unlawful Society: Global Crime and Security in a Complex World (2014), To the Islands: White Australians and the Malay Archipelago since 1788, (2007), Crime Wars: The Global Intersection of Crime, Political Violence and International Law, (2011) and Globalization and Human Security, (2009). He is co-editor of International Development: An Inquiry into Global Development Practice (2017), and the SAGE Handbook of Globalization, Vol. 1&2 (2014).

Dr Diane Lee

Dr Diane Lee is a specialist in the sustainable development of tourism in Australia and developing nations.  She has worked with both the State and Federal governments on tourism related matters and was the WA State Network Coordinator of the Sustainable Tourism CRC 204-2006.   Diane held an Executive Committee member position on the WA tourism industry group the Forum Advocating Cultural and Ecotourism from 2005-2015.  She is currently the Academic Chair of Tourism and Events at Murdoch University with delivery at both Murdoch and Singapore campuses. She really values working with ‘future professionals’ of the tourism industry and is keen to play a valuable role on this advisory panel.

Dr Aaron Tham

Dr Aaron Tham is Lecturer in Tourism, Leisure and Events Management within the School of Business at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He teaches across several tourism-related courses at the Southbank campus. Aaron’s primary research areas include social media and emerging technologies and their influence on tourist behaviour. Aaron currently sits on four journal editorial boards and is also the Vice-President of the Travel and Tourism Research Association Asia-Pacific Chapter.

Mr Paul Strickland

Paul has had over 15 years experience in the hospitality sector including pubs, taverns, cocktail bars, numerous restaurants, large 5 star rated hotels, private functions and weddings, international events and in a variety of countries. Paul is currently the Program Director and Lecturer in Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management at  La Trobe University. He primarily teaches at the undergraduate level in Food and Beverage Supervision, Computer Reservations Systems, Tourism and Hospitality Simulation and runs an international study tour to Vietnam. He also teaches in the Royal Institute of Tourism and Hospitality in Bhutan and has won two teaching awards.

Paul has over twenty peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in wine tourism, space tourism, ethnic and Bhutanese studies and co-authored a book titled Gastronomy and the Media. He is currently enrolled in a PhD researching marketing innovations in the wine industry.

Dr Gareth Butler

Gareth is a senior lecturer at Flinders University and primarily focuses on the delivery of topics that have strong sustainable tourism development and community engagement themes. He is the current coordinator for the department’s international field school which typically involves travel to a destination in SE Asia (Malaysia or Cambodia) or China.

He presently holds the additional title of Senior Research Affiliate at the University of Johannesburg and has worked on funded tourism development research projects in rural South Africa. He has previously taught at universities in the UK and Malaysia.

Dr Barry Fraser

Barry Fraser has been actively involved in the Tourism and Hospitality industry for over twenty years. He has worked extensively in international hotels across Australia and has held a number of senior management positions. Barry is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. Since entering education he has taught a variety of tourism, hotel and event management courses and he oversees the Department’s Work Integrated Learning activities.

In 2017 Barry completed his Doctoral thesis which examined hospitality management competencies, hospitality management pedagogy, work integrated learning and graduate employability.

Dr David Beirman

David Beirman is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism in the Management Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney. He completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees majoring in Sociology at UNSW. David‘s 30 year career in the Australian travel industry encompassed work with retail travel agencies, wholesale tour operators, consolidation and air fares, destination marketing and management, human resource management and in-service travel industry training. Prior to joining UTS as a full-time lecturer in November, 2009 David had developed tourism courses and lectured part-time at UTS, Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, University of Sydney and UNSW in market research, Middle East Studies and Sociology.

His specialist areas of research are tourism risk, crisis and recovery management and destination marketing. He has been widely published in these fields. He has been invited as a keynote speaker in conferences all over the world and has provided crisis and recovery management consultation to governments and tourism businesses in Australia and overseas. David maintains industry connections as a member of PATA’s Rapid Response Crisis Management Task Force and as a founding member since 2003 of the Consular Consultative group to the Australian Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade. From 2000-2012 he was the founder and National Secretary of the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association which promoted and marketed 17 national destinations between Italy and Jordan to the Australian travel trade and consumer markets. He was also Director of the Israel Government Tourism Office (Oceania) from 1994-2006.  In September 2011 and September 2012 he co-organized the UN World Tourism Organization’s conferences held in Australia on the integration of Emergency Management and Tourism. David is the co-chair of the Tourism Risk, Crisis and Recovery Special Interest Group of the Council of Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Educators.

In 2015 he was actively involved with PATA’s Nepal Recovery Taskforce which developed a series of strategies to expedite the recovery of tourism to Nepal following the April 25, 2015 earthquake. In 2016 he worked with the Council of Australian Tour Operators to develop their risk, crisis management strategy guide which is used by over 100 Australian based outbound tour operators

In May 2017 David was an invited speaker to the APEC Counter Terrorism and Tourism Resilience Workshop held in Bali, Indonesia and a keynote speaker at Thailand’s National Tourism Conference in June 2017.

Dr Yujie Zhu

Yujie Zhu is a Lecturer at the School of Archeology and Anthropology, Australian National University. Yujie is interested in the politics of cultural heritage, and its relation to issues like cultural tourism, urbanization, nationalism and religious practices. Yujie is the author of Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) and the co-editor of Politics of Scale (Berghahn Books 2018) and Sustainable Tourism Management at World Heritage Sites (UNWTO 2009). He has also published more than thirty articles that appeared in leading anthropology, tourism, and heritage journals, including American Anthropologist, Annals of Tourism Research, and International Journal of heritage studies. In addition, Yujie is the vice chair of the IUAES Commission on the Anthropology of Tourism and an executive committee member of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.

Associate Professor Christof Pforr

Associate Professor Pforr is Discipline Leader (Tourism, Hospitality & Events) and Course Coordinator for Tourism & Hospitality with the School of Marketing  at Curtin University. Associate Professor Pforr has more than 20 years teaching and research experience at university level at four Australian universities and has held significant leadership roles in research as well as teaching and learning. Reflecting his academic background, which spans across tourism management, geography, political science and history, A/Prof Pforr’s past and current research is inter- and multidisciplinary. In essence, his activities concentrate on four interconnected research areas, sustainability, tourism public policy, destination governance and health tourism.

Dr Paul Green

Dr Paul Green is a Social Anthropologist at The University of Melbourne. His teaching interests engage with anthropological perspectives on personhood, kinship, nationalism, gender and sexuality and migration. In 2017 he developed and delivered a Cultural Tourism in Southeast Asia course, in collaboration with Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia. The course has received New Colombo Plan mobility funding from the Australian Government across 2017 and 2018 to provide Australian students with the opportunity to engage with the anthropology of cultural tourism in one of the world’s leading tourism destinations. Paul’s research interests also centre on the Southeast Asia region, where he conducts ethnographic research with international retirees and mobile professionals and entrepreneurs in Ubud, Chiang Mai, Penang and other popular lifestyle destinations in the region.