Dr Maria Gebbels is an Associate Professor and an Academic Portfolio Lead – Hospitality and Tourism at the School of Management and Marketing at the University of Greenwich. She holds a Senior Fellowship in Higher Education. She was awarded a Ph.D. for a study entitled, “Career Paths in Hospitality: A Life History Approach” at the University of Brighton. Maria’s research is positioned within critical hospitality focusing on employing the concept of hospitality as a lens to understand social relations. She publishes on gender and women career trajectories in hospitality, as well as food and in-prison fine dining. Her latest project focuses on the menopause at the workplace. She co-authored ‘Adventure Tourist: Being, Knowing, Becoming’. Maria has a strong interest in international collaborations and knowledge exchange and is currently working on research projects with colleagues from the UK, The Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Maria is currently serving as a Vice-Chair of the Institute of Hospitality’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Council, which champions addressing disability, equality, diversity, and inclusion issues across the hospitality industry.

She has worked in education for over 25 years, including teaching, management and research, and has published several journal articles, book chapters and is the editor of the Spa Management book published by Goodfellows.

She has been invited to speak at international conferences, and has undertaken research on the impact of spa graduates on spa businesses and the development of curriculum, work-based learning and the different use of knowledge in the workplace. She is passionate about the contribution hospitality and tourism can make to improving health and wellbeing and about establishing linkages between research, teaching and learning where research needs to be linked to the industry and to local communities. 

She is a reviewer for a number of journals in hospitality, event and tourism and is the founding member of the International Journal of Spa and Wellness.  She is also the co-host of the Tourism Naturally Conference in partnership with Colorado State University. She is on the Board of a number of local organisations in Derbyshire including the Culture, Heritage and Tourism Board, the Buxton Crescent Trust, the Arkwright Society and the School of Artisan Food.

She is a graduate of Queen Margaret University Edinburgh in hospitality and Leicester University where she studied a MSc in Training.  She has experience of teaching across a wide range of subject areas including management principles, marketing and consumer behaviour and skills development to tourism, hospitality and retailing courses.  More recently she led the Centre in new curriculum developments including the first undergraduate programme in Hospitality Leadership, the first of its kind in the UK and was the Co-chair of CHME from 2009 until her retirement.

​For a number of years she was responsible for the management of all sandwich placements and work based learning components for all students within the Tourism, Hospitality and Events School. This included developing and delivering modules which prepared students for working in a variety of countries and integrated an essential element of cultural awareness.

​Although her background is in hospitality management, she has also worked in recruitment and careers development with a major organisation in the United States.

Alisha is an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in the sustainable development of tourism and hospitality. As an Associate Professor, her research and teaching focus on examining technology for sustainable tourism development, the relationship between sustainable development, technology and education, and the broader applications of sustainable development by focusing on social responsibility, working conditions and entrepreneurship.

She is also the Head of Research Degrees in the Social and Economic Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, where I lead doctoral education (PhDs and Professional Doctorates) in social sciences. She is passionate about researcher development, and she is an experienced doctoral supervisor and examiner.

Alisha has a background in consultancy, working with government offices, destination management organisations (DMOs) and international, national, and local businesses. Some of her career highlights include developing feasibility studies for DMOs, developing marketing communication material for the travel and tourism industry, conducting market research and analysis of worldwide trends in the hospitality and tourism industry, and working on live tourism plans and projects and participating in their implementation.

Una is Professor of Hospitality Management and Head of Accreditation at Ulster University Business School and is the former Head of Department for Hospitality and Tourism Management which includes the award winning Academy restaurant in Belfast. Una is a past Chair, Vice Chair, and Honorary Treasurer of the Council of Hospitality Management Education (CHME) and is currently a member of the Executive Committee. She also sits on the committee of United Kingdom and Ireland Accreditation Group (UKIAG).

Una’s main research areas are tourism futures, revenue management, and tourism marketing. She is the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management and a board member of the Journal of Tourism Futures. She has published extensively in leading journals and is author/co-editor of nine books including The Future Past of Tourism: Historical Perspectives and Future Evolutions and Science Fiction, Disruption and Tourism. Recent research grants include an investigation into the establishing a strong food safety culture in small food businesses and food safety advice for vulnerable patients in healthcare settings on the island of Ireland. 

She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been an external examiner at institutions both nationally and internationally including the University of Surrey, the University of Bournemouth, University College Birmingham, University of Plymouth, Glion Institution of Higher Education (Switzerland) and EASM East Asia Institute of Management, Singapore.

He is hospitality co-editor of the Journal of Tourism and Hospitality research (http://thr.sagepub.com) and has served as a member of the executive of the Institute of Hospitality. He is passionate about hospitality education and applied research that helps industry, as he comes from a family of hoteliers and restaurateurs.  

Prior to his academic career, he worked for Hotels and Restaurants in Europe and he still keeps one leg in industry by providing consultancy services to tourism destinations,  hoteliers and restaurateurs.  His blog http://spiritofphiloxenia.blogspot.com/ often features videos and articles that are of use to both students and professionals.

Paul has extensive hospitality management experience and after completing his first qualification in Hotel Management worked for prestigious hotel companies such as Hilton.

Paul commenced his academic career at Glasgow Caledonian University during which time he completed an MSc in Human Resource Management at The University of Strathclyde. Paul then spent 11 years as senior lecturer at The University of Queensland, Australia, during which time was awarded his PhD which examined international students’ educational experiences in Australian universities. Paul continues to study the education experience of students studying hospitality and tourism at university and recent projects include developing an understanding of the role of part time working amongst full time students and examining the impact of international students on both home students and academic staff.

Paul has received substantial research funding to explore employment and environmental management practices in the hospitality and tourism industry and has recently been awarded funding to develop a toolkit that measures the socio/cultural impacts of festivals and events. Paul is a previous executive editor of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management and has authored over 50 articles in the fields of hospitality and tourism.

Peter Lugosi is Professor of Culture and Organisation at the Oxford Brookes Business School and the Centre for Business, Society and Global Challenges at Oxford Brookes University. His interdisciplinary work on hospitality, tourism and events tries to expand understanding of their principles and refine international management practices. He has researched and published on a wide range of subjects including customer experience management, sustainable organisational practices, migrants’ adaptation, labour market transition and entrepreneurship, hospitality and urban transformation, parenting cultures, qualitative methods, alongside organizational and consumer behaviour in tourism and hospitality. He has conducted work in the USA, Brazil, Hungary, Hong Kong and Australia, including on strategies for embedding responsible principles into staff development and training, operations management, place promotion and stakeholder engagement. His research and outreach work has also sought to improve the employability and employment experiences of migrants in the UK, Europe, Brazil and Canada, particularly through the organisation of support services and in the design and management of mentoring schemes and coaching interventions. Peter represents CHME on the Academy of Social Sciences, and he has provided responses to a range of consultations on CHME’s behalf, including on the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ Journal Quality Guide and the Research Excellence Framework.    

She has been involved in CHME since its inception and was Head of the CHME Research Group for several years. She was a member of the Hotel and Catering Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield and a member of the Centre for the Study of Small Tourism and Hospitality firms at Leeds Beckett University. 

​She was appointed as an additional commissioner by the Home Office to examine Race Discrimination in UK hotels. She was a Director of the Low Pay Unit and is currently the CHME Executive member who represents CHME on the Advisory Board of the European Mise en Place competition – an annual competition for the top hotel schools in Europe. 

​Her main research area focuses on hospitality management undergraduates and their changing perceptions of the hospitality industry as a career. 

​Stephanie is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy). 

She joined Surrey in 1993, and since then has developed curriculum and programmes, led a number of funded research projects and published in the in the peer-reviewed literature.

She also sits on the University’s Quality and Standards sub-committee, and is thus involved in the wider governance of university educational provision.

Her main areas of expertise are in consumer behaviour linked to food in hospitality and tourism contexts and food hygiene, both from a consumer and hospitality operative perspective.

Eleni (Elina) Michopoulou is an Associate Professor in Business Management at University of Derby, UK. Her research interests include information systems in tourism, online consumer behaviour and technology acceptance. She is particularly interested in the field of accessible and wellness tourism, which she has actively been researching for over fifteen years. Eleni has published over 80 academic journal articles, book chapters and conference papers.  She is the co-director of the International Research Association of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Networks in Academia (ATHENA); co-founder of THEINC International Conference, sits on the editorial board of over 10 high impact academic journals and is the Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Spa and Wellness by Routledge/Taylor&Francis.

Shelagh lectures in organizational behaviour and human resources management at Auckland University of Technology, in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research field is critical hospitality studies,  and her studies explore intersecting dimensions of gender, age and ethnicity in hospitality and tourism employment, frequently using a feminist lens. Current  collaborations address sustainable workforce issues at the intersections of macro, meso and micro levels.  Past projects have included collaborations on students’ career motivations  and women’s career strategies with research teams in the United Kingdom.

Her research focuses on the luxury accommodation experience, co-creation, hospitality for good, and hospitality education. Tracy’s PhD presented original findings into how luxury accommodation experiences are co-created, providing industry managers with practical insights into how they could create luxury accommodation experiences in their own organisations.

Recently, Tracy has been involved in international collaboration with UK academics and the Clink charity, researching ‘using hospitality for good’. Tracy worked for 14 years as a human resource manager, a food and beverage manager, and housekeeping in luxury hotels and luxury lodges.

Lisa Wyld is the Head of Missenden Abbey International Hotel and Hospitality School at Buckinghamshire New University.  Lisa has worked for international chains, independent businesses and at mega sporting & exclusive events. Lisa teaches subjects related to events and hospitality, in contexts such as event design and theming, impacts of food and beverage on culture, event impacts, consumer behaviour and experiences as well as leadership challenges within these industries.  Her research interests are broadly in these areas, as well as the links between industry and academia and the use of different pedagogy. She likes to involve students in the classroom so tend not to conduct many lectures, preferring instead to deliver workshops where everyone learns together. She likes to teach in a way that helps students to challenge their own assumptions and to be more critical of what they read, hear, and say in their everyday lives. It is important that students learn alongside her, rather than passively listening to lectures. She especially enjoys mentoring those who need a little extra support and encouragement to reach their goals. She is co-founder of Hospitality and Universities United (HUU), an organisation to bridge the divide between academia and industry and a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality. 

Mairead McEntee is Associate Head of School for Management, Leadership and Marketing in the Ulster University Business School, prior to this she was Associate Head for Hospitality and Tourism Management, also within the Business School.  As well as being a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she has an MEd in Higher Education practice and is a Certified Management and Business Educator (Chartered Associate of Business Schools). 

In a consultancy career spanning 15 years Mairead advised both the public and private sectors on hospitality and tourism related projects and developed specific expertise in tourism regeneration, enterprise and entrepreneurship and infrastructure development.  Specific projects included the development of an extensive number of business plans including the Lough Erne Golf Resort and numerous appraisals and evaluations of key tourism projects such as the Causeway Coastal route strategy.  As a lecturer, Mairead delivered modules that reflected her real-life experience, specialising in performance metrics, strategic management and tourism.          

Research interests include tourism and hospitality education, tourism futures and metaphors in the classroom.  These research fields have intersected in several book chapters and papers including the 2023 paper, Evil Education: Developing the philosophic practitioner through horror which won the Best Teaching and Learning paper at CHME 2023.  

Mark is an award-winning educator and educational leader at the University of Surrey where he currently holds the post of University Academic Lead for Employability. Mark was recognised as the Teacher of the Year for the University at the Vice-Chancellors’ Awards for Excellence in 2022 and the national CHME Annual Excellence in Learning and Teaching award for 2023. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality where he also serves as a national supervisory board member, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and a member of the Executive Committee for the Council of Hospitality Management Educators (CHME).

Mark’s research interests focus on hospitality operations management and specifically the impacts of innovation and technology on sustainability, service design and management. Mark has published his work in leading journals and at international conferences. His first journal publication won the Outstanding Paper for the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (3* ABS Journal) Emerald Literati Award Winners for 2021. 

Prior to academe, Mark enjoyed a career in four and five red star hotels initially as Food and Beverage Manager at the Five Red Star Athenaeum Hotel and Apartments on Piccadilly in London. Mark later moved to Tylney Hall, a luxury Country House hotel in Hampshire, as Deputy General Manager, and became General Manager three years later. Mark’s most recent General Manager’s role was at the design-led, Aviator – a hotel by Tag, in Farnborough, where he and his team secured red star status for the hotel in less than twelve months and won a string of other awards.

Mark holds a Master’s by Research from Bournemouth University in Service Process Design, a Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from the University of Surrey, where he graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) in Hotel and Catering Management, receiving an Associateship of the University for distinction in his professional training year.

Dr Gavin Urie is a Lecturer in Hospitality Management within the Business School at Edinburgh Napier University. He specialises in food and beverage management, accommodation management, sustainability, experience design, business skills and the development of alternative economies within hospitality provision. Gavin has experience of teaching at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level and interests in student wellbeing, support and equality. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Gavin completed his undergraduate degree (BA (Hons) Community Arts) and postgraduate degree (MSc International Hospitality & Tourism Management) at the University of Strathclyde before moving to Edinburgh Napier University to complete his PhD. His research focused on the growth of network commensality (pop-ups, supper clubs, etc.) and how these experiences contribute to alternative economies of hospitality. He also looked at the social interactions, use of space, understanding of tradition, background and upbringing in creating memorable meal experiences from both a guest and host perspective. Gavin has appeared at a number of internationally recognised conferences and contributes to various academic publications.

Gavin’s research interests are in principles and philosophies of hospitality, alternative economies, food and beverage, social interaction, identity, belonging, home, sustainability, circular economies, education, qualitative research, pedagogies of care, and regenerative hospitality.

He is supportive and committed to promoting high quality hospitality management education and pedagogies and focuses on incorporating blended and online practices to foster inclusivity, equality, and pedagogical affordances in relation to quality enhancement within higher education.