Working with key public and policy stakeholders to foster student and staff collaboration within an international research project: the case of ‘slow tourism’.

The Lord Ashcroft International Business School (LAIBS) tourism team at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (UK) has been working closely with a network of European universities (including University of Bergamo in Italy and the University of Girona in Spain) to analyse the role of ‘slow tourism’ for the management and development of a new type of ‘sustainable’ tourism system for historic cities (see Wilbert and Duignan, 2015). The research has engaged with a host of regional stakeholders, from local authorities, NGOs, to cultural and food and drink festival directors to small businesses and – to establish local needs, perspectives and to gather data. Over the past two years, since the beginning of 2014, business school academics have sought to bring regional stakeholders and the public together with academics, undergraduate and postgraduate and tourism students to open conversations around the importance and practices of ‘slow tourism’, and to invoke newer, more responsible, forms of tourism management and development in such contexts. In recognition of this work, in December 2015, the staff and student research team won the Association of Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE) national award for tourism contributions and leadership in the visitor economy, presented by VisitBritain at the University of Oxford, St Anne’s College. in December 2015,