Festival Encounters

Michelle Duffy is an Associate Professor in Human Geography in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. In broad terms, her research explores how interactions between people and place contribute to notions of community and identity, and hence the processes of belonging and alienation. Her work includes a critical examination of community resilience, well-being, and sustainability; the significance of emotion and affect in creating notions of belonging and exclusion; the role of art practice - specifically that of sound, music and performance - in creating and/or challenging notions of identity and belonging in public spaces and public events; and an exploration of the body as a means of embodied, emotional and affective communication.

Judith Mair is a Senior Lecturer in Event Management in the Tourism Cluster of the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include the impacts of events on community and society; consumer behaviour in events and tourism; the relationship between events and climate change; and business and major events. Judith is working on a number of projects including researching the links between events and social capital; understanding the benefits for attendees of attending conferences and conventions; and assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the tourism and events sector. She is the author of Conferences and Conventions: A Research Perspective and Events and Sustainability, both published by Routledge in 2015, as well as more than 35 academic papers in internationally recognised journals. http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/10389