Events and Well-being

Allan Stewart Jepson has contributed widely to event studies literature within the realm of community festivals and events. His seminal work investigated power, hegemony and the construction, representation and consumption of culture(s) at a community festival and was the first to reveal marginalised local communities trapped and underrepresented in a community cultural festival. He has three key texts in event studies, all edited with Alan Clarke, University of Pannonia, Hungary. He, along with colleagues, is currently pursuing a research agenda investigating the well-being impacts of local community festivals and events which has centred on families and Quality of Life and more recently to investigate arts participation events and collective memory creation amongst the over 70s and how these events can reduce the common psychosocial impacts associated with older age.

Trudie Walters is a freelance researcher and consultant living in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her research platform centres on events and leisure as interdisciplinary lenses through which to understand the inner workings and values of society. She is developing and managing the data strategy for Tourism New Zealand's Conference Impact programme, which seeks to create genuine, long-lasting social legacies from conferences, and is a consultant with TRC Tourism. She serves as President of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies. In her spare time, she runs, cooks, photographs, potters about in her garden, explores new places with her husband, panders to the needs of her cat, and fossicks about in second-hand shops of all kinds.