I’m currently the Director of the Centre for Recreation and Tourism Research at University of Highlands and Islands North, West and Hebrides.  Developing and managing knowledge exchange and EU-funded projects and writing academic papers and articles are core responsibilities.  I have been involved in 18 trans-national tourism projects since starting at the centre and have an extensive network of contacts internationally.

I have written many peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on nature-based tourism, including the physical and mental benefits that can be derived.  Further academic work has focussed on forest bathing and motivations related to accessing the great outdoors on bikes.  My scholarly output has most recently been on the slow adventure marketing concept and cultural heritage tourism.

As of September 2023 I am supervising three PhD students, one exploring potential conflict related to electric mountain biking (as Director of Studies), another on visitor engagement and storytelling on the Neolithic, and the third on adventure tourism development in South Africa (through a SA-UK University Staff Doctoral Program).

I obtained my PhD at the Department of Tourism, University of Otago, New Zealand.  My qualitative research explored the issue of participation in autonomously-controlled, non-commodified adventure sports, using mountain biking as a case study.  The primary aim of my thesis was to establish the range of factors that influence people’s participation in such an activity, from participants’ motivations to the environmental attributes that attract them to locations at which their motivations can be realised.

I have been involved in the development of the Slow Adventure® marketing concept since 2014. Having developed the ‘Slow Adventure in Northern Territories’ Interreg project and been a co-founder of a spin-of company Slow Adventure Ltd, I remain a staunch advocate of the slow adventure ethos.