Industry focused research
Our research focuses on understanding event, hotel, sport and tourism management, and real estate and property development - and the role these industries play in our lives. Through our research, the Department aims to contribute to sustainability, engender corporate social responsibility, influence social and government policies, and promote best practice in our field.
Example research projects
Social legacies of large-scale sport events
Title: Developing an inventory to improve evidence-based planning and monitoring of social legacies
Investigators: Dr Millicent Kennelly, Emeritus Professor Kristine Toohey and Dr Alana Thomson
Overview: Host communities value the social legacies of large-scale sport events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Commonly cited examples of social legacies include encouraging volunteering, stimulating national pride, and improving provision for sport participation. This project developed an empirically derived Social Legacy Inventory (SLI) for large-scale sport events. The SLI catalogues 48 diverse, positive social legacies identified by practitioners and in academic research situated in different geo-cultural and temporal contexts. In doing so, the SLI gives visibility to the diversity of social legacies and provides a resource for future host city practitioners, to guide their thinking around what social legacies may be needed and/or possible in their specific contexts. In addition, the SLI provides a conceptual reference point for the development of future knowledge on the impacts and legacies of large-scale sport events.
Industry partners: International Olympic Committee, Olympic Studies Centre
Constructing Building Integrity
Title: Constructing Building Integrity: Raising standards through Professionalism
Investigators: Prof Charles Sampford, Professor Keith Hampson, AProf Sacha Reid, AProf Cheryl Desha, Prof Paul Burton, AProf Hazel Easthope, Prof Michael Ostwald, Prof John Phillimore, Prof Kerry London, Roxane Shaw, Nabil Yazdani, Andrew Lumsden.
Overview: This project aims to investigate the role of professions in rebuilding trust in residential building construction in Australia. In the wake of expensive and life-threatening building defects, this project expects to generate new knowledge about the functioning of individual professionals, professionals employed in multi-profession organisations, and professionals’ interaction with their institutional environment. Expected outcomes include practical recommendations for improved professional standards, a rigorous building integrity system and a means for measuring change. Anticipated benefits include greater awareness by professions, trades and regulators of their role in in delivering the public goods of a trustworthy construction industry.
Industry partners: Australian Research Council Linkage Project, Professional Standards Council, Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, Department of Housing & Public Works, Corrs Chambers Westgarth.
Fire impacts and responses
Title: Memories of fire: gathering stories about the fire impacts and responses to build resilience
Investigators: Prof Karine Dupre, Dr Margarida Abreu Novais, A/Prof Sarah Gardiner, Dr Guy Castley, A/Prof Jim Smart
Overview: The overall aim of the project was to gain a deeper understanding of how communities can prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters with a focus on enhancing resilience. This was an interdisciplinary project which spanned the fields of tourism, architecture, and environment, and completed with the collaboration of various stakeholders in the Scenic Rim region.
The project gathered and shared first-hand experiences of the community responses to the 2019-2020 bushfires that impacted natural heritage sites. A storytelling exhibition – the Phoenix Pavilion - was built and put on display on different impacted sites to collect and share memories, increasing awareness, fostering discussion and building collective learning. In addition, the project involved the design and delivery of several community workshops to discuss strategies that can assist communities to enhance their resilience.
This project was jointly funded under the Commonwealth/State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2020.
Industry partners: Scenic Rim Regional Council, Binna Burra Lodge and Mount Barney Lodge
Persuading tourists to use fewer resources
Title: Understanding how best to persuade tourists to use fewer resources across various accommodation settings.
Investigators: Professor Susanne Becken, Associate Professor Alexandra Coghlan and Xavier Font.
Overview: This project aims to bring sustainable reductions in resource use to mainstream tourism, one of the world’s largest, most resource-intensive sectors. The project challenges the view that pro-environmental attitudes are a pre-requisite for pro-environmental behaviours, and in doing so promotes redesigning social practices in accommodation to achieve greater sustainability outcomes.
Using an experimental design, this project will provide empirical evidence on the efficacy of combining smart technology and interpersonal communication into a smartservice intervention to change guest resource use. The desired outcomes will be less resource consumption, greater guest satisfaction, and an evidence-based approach to a greener mainstream economy.
Funder: ARC Discovery Project (DP200100972 — Griffith University)
Sport and Gender Equity
The purpose of Sport and Gender Equity @ Griffith is to lead innovative and impactful research that advances gender equity in sport through a multi-disciplinary research hub connecting scholars, practitioners, athletes and advocates.
The hub aims to:
- contribute to knowledge and practice that addresses the complexity of gender inequality and diversity within and beyond sport
- Engage in collaborative and innovative research to advance opportunities for women and girls to lead in all aspects of sport
- and educate for sustainable change in classrooms, organisations and the public sphere to transform sport cultures and gender relations.
Higher Degree Research
We pride ourselves on supporting emerging scholars and actively involving them in the activities of the Department and our partner research centres.
We have a large number Higher Degree by Research students with a wide range of thesis.
The Griffith Institute for Tourism
As we seek to drive innovation in the tourism sector, we have close ties with the Griffith Institute for Tourism which is consistently ranked amongst the top three institutions globally for tourism research.