Professor David Harrison

Qualifications and Introduction:

Certificate in Education (Coventry); B.Sc. (Sociology) (Goldsmiths College, London), Ph.D (Anthropology) (University College London); FRGS, FTS.</font>

A Londoner, David Harrison is Professor and Head of School of Tourism and Hospitality Management.  After studying Sociology and Social Anthropology in London, he taught for many years at the University of Sussex and at London Metropolitan University, and also spent a year at the University of Bendel State in Nigeria.  Immediately before coming to USP he was at the Overseas Development Institute in London.  A sociologist of development, with specific reference to tourism, since the mid-1980s his teaching and research have focused on the economic, social and cultural aspects of tourism in less developed countries, and he has carried out research and written on tourism in the Eastern Caribbean, Southern Africa, Eastern Europe, South-east Asia and the South Pacific.

Publications:

Among his books are the single-authored text The Sociology of Modernisation and Development (1988), and he has edited Tourism and the Less Developed Countries (1992), Sustainable Tourism in Islands and Small States: Case Studies (1996, with Lino Briguglio, Richard Butler and Walter Leal Filho), Tourism and the Less Developed World: Issues and Case Studies (2001), Pacific Island Tourism (2003), and (with Michael Hitchcock) The Politics of World Heritage: Negotiating Tourism and Conservation (2005).  He has also written many papers in major tourism journals, most recently focusing on pro-poor tourism.

Research and Consultancy:

Professor Harrison’s current research is on the impacts of tourism in the South Pacific and the extent to which the benefits of different kinds of tourism are diffused throughout the population.

In the late 1990s, he was heavily involved in writing Ecotourism and Village-based Tourism: A Policy and Strategy for Fiji.  More recently, his consultancy work has focused on tourism in South-east Asia, most specifically Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam and (with the co-operation of local experts) he recently completed a preliminary study on tourism and the environment in the Lower Mekong Basin.

Teaching:

Professor Harrison teaches the 300-level course Tourism in Less Developed Countries and also teaches on the postgraduate programme.  To date, he has supervised eighteeen successful Ph.D students, and is currently supervising three others.  

External activities:

He is on the Editorial Board of several prominent tourism journals, including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism and Hospitality Planning and Development, Tourism Recreation Research, Tourism, Culture and Communication, Tourism Review International and Current Issues in Tourism.

In the UK, he was one of the first judges of the now-established Tourism for Tomorrow awards.

Administration:

Professor Harrison is a member of USP’s Senate and countless other Committees in the Faculty of Business and Economics.

Special Interests:

An interest that links work and leisure is that of early depictions of the South Pacific, especially in old photographs and postcards.  Outside work, Professor Harrison’s interest include Western classical music, most notably from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, modern and traditional theatre (especially Shakespeare), and films.  He occasionally plays squash, and is a life-long supporter of Chelsea Football Club.