Projects

Description
Urban tourism has been developing in residential areas and there is already evidence that shows that the overlapping between tourism activities and the daily life of neighbourhoods is not socially sustainable. To overcome this challenge, it is important to identify public policies that will be able to balance the two. This doctoral work will: i) get to know the experiences of residents living in areas highly impacted by tourism and ii) analyse and put forward public policy recommendations that may ensure urban social sustainability. The study will take place in neighbourhoods of Lisbon and Porto and the research methods will be mainly qualitative. On the one hand, this work is expected to contribute to the growing literature on the effects of tourism and the Airbnb model on the residential and functional life of cities and, on the other hand, to the construction of public policies for a more sustainable and inclusive urban planning.

Description
This PhD project deals with the urban literary territories in Aquilino Ribeiro, using the emotional geography lived and recreated in the cities of Lisbon and Paris, at the beginning of the 20th century. It is consolidated in a repertoire of non-representational theories, with the objective of evaluating the exploration of an analytical framework that seeks to clarify the relevance that literary landscapes assume for the mapping of an affective geography in the urban territory.
It is in the impregnation between the lived and the imagination / fiction that the investigation makes use of certain modalities of methodological research based on instruments of direct and indirect observation.
The results to be presented will reflect precisely the symbolic value that literary landscapes achieve as emblematic vehicles of an emotional geography, lending a robust interpretation of the different temporal spaces and the way they are reflected in the respective urban transformations.

Description
A  growing literature unveils how the global paradigm for tourism development, embedded in a capitalist economic system dominated by top-down governance and neoliberal policies, is increasingly responsible for contributing to socio-ecological crises, causing or accelerating issues of different natures (e.g. gentrification, touristification, socio-spatial injustice, pollution, overconsumption, threats to biodiversity/wildlife) which profoundly challenge and transform territories. Overtourism, as an overarching term, highlights the extensive range of consequences linked with tourism growth, asking for alternatives. Faced with multiple human-induced crises, tourism must act to find resolutions rather than exacerbate them. Yet, a myopic and opportunistic view of tourism as an industry for profit-making shapes it as a crucial player in the current exceeding of planetary boundaries. Critically pointing out the dominant neoliberal and capitalist forms of tourism development, this research seeks to activate alternative tourism futures to prevent the spread of overtourism issues. To achieve such an ambitious goal, a multi-method qualitative methodology will be operationalised in the focus area (Côa Valley, Portugal), to grasp tourism complexity, promote alternative governance models and try to affirm an overall alternative paradigm for tourism development, where growth is framed critically. A posthumanist perspective focusing on more-than-human well-being, instead, will be crucial to address the current anthropocentrism of most tourism theories and practices. Faced with today’s global challenges, how can collaborative tourism governance be implemented to design different tourism futures and prevent overtourism?

Description
The history of modern tourism has been shaken by different epidemics, as seen during the SARS, HIV and Ebola outbreaks and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak that shocked the world. Through a comparative study, the current PhD project aims to analyse crisis management models for tourist destinations, understanding their suitability for epidemic situations. In turn, using a mixed methodology, the case study investigates the impacts of COVID-19 in Lisbon and measures taken to contain the outbreak, as well as the consequences and strategies for tourism recovering. Knowing the tourism system capacity for resilience and adaptability, it will understand how an epidemic creates opportunities to rethink the destination’s development model, modelling more sustainable future scenarios for the post-COVID-19 Lisbon destination.

Description
After years since its creation, Airbnb has distanced itself from the sharing economy, constituting a highly organised industry that merges the rental and the hospitality markets. While there is extensive research on the urban effects of short-term rentals, this project will study how the supply-side of Airbnb’s rental market is organised and what are the socio-spatial practices of its actors. The hypothesis is that the market is formed by a myriad of tech-driven players that use platforms as a new distribution channel and whose actions may lead to the increase in the ongoing financialisation of housing process. This is an innovative research proposal, since it bases the study of Airbnb’s ecosystem on the lens of platform studies, moving from the sharing economy perspective that has informed policy making in recent years. It also innovates by studying such problem through the case of Rio de Janeiro, given the fact that the Latin American reality hasn’t been approached in extent by research on short-term rentals.

Description
Community-based tourism adopts sustainable practices enabling the conservation of heritage, improvement in quality of life, and the enhancement of the identity of traditional communities. It is necessary for tourism to go beyond the economic issue and find a path towards a regenerative practice, not having its success measured only by the number of visitors and/or increase in profits. The objective of this study is to analyze the advantages and challenges of community-based tourism as a model that favors the conservation and regeneration of cultural and natural heritage. The research will be developed in the Cearense Network of Community Tourism — Rede Tucum, composed of eleven community-based tourism initiatives located on the coast of the state of Ceará, Brazil. Data analysis will be carried out in a qualitative and interpretative way, considering the reflexive interpretation of the context, the participation and the perceptions of the characters involved.

Description
This research explores how tourism impact the everyday life of women living in Lisbon city centre. Feminist researchers show us that cities and their infrastructure have been designed and organized to respond to men’s needs. However, gender stereotypes related to the division of housework and caretaking influence how women experience these male-oriented cities. Women use local facilities and services such as groceries, pharmacies and schools more than men. For this reason, the spaces where a large flow of tourists and transitory populations coexist with the everyday life of residents offer even more challenges for women to realize the right to the city. Thus, it seems highly relevant to build new knowledge based on the reflection of the distinctions in the use of space between genders that live in the tourist area. The research analyses how the flow of tourists and mobile population collides and intertwines to women’s everyday life. In particular, the project will explore in detail how overcrowding of public spaces, tourism-induced retail change and transformations in the social capital of the area are experienced by women. The research incorporates intersectional analysis into the study of urban space, recognizing the plural identity of women.

Description
In social-ecological systems, understanding the interactions between people and nature is essential for fostering their resilience during global change. A majority of these interactions are called ’nature’s contribution to people’ (NCP) as all the beneficial and harmful effects of nature on human wellbeing. Assessing the balance between different NCPs will shed light on the context- specific factors that determine the performance of conservation interventions. In this project, I will evaluate the impacts of two NCPs (economic gain from tourism and livestock loss to jaguars) on stakeholders’ attitudes toward nature conservation in the largest wetland worldwide, the Pantanal, at the boundaries of Encontro das Aguas State Park (EASP), Mato Grosso, Brazil, before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As the socio-economic structures and people’s values can be highly impacted by shocks such as the COVID-19, these impacts could redefine our relationship with nature and how different NCPs impact our attitude toward nature conservation. My research will combine a set of interdisciplinary approaches to (a) quantify the role of nature-based tourism and human-wildlife conflict in people’s livelihoods and wellbeing around protected areas; (b) how these NCPs affect people’s support for nature conservation; and (c) how these interactions have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.