Kathleen Andereck, PhD is a Professor with the School of Community Resources and Development and Center for Sustainable Tourism at Arizona State University, and a Global Futures Scientist with the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. Her research focuses on the tourism experience from the perspective of both visitors and residents particularly as it applies to sustainable community tourism and visitor use management. She has conducted recreation and tourism research and service work with a diversity of organizations and agencies including the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, National Park Service, Navajo Nation, Arizona Office of Tourism, Colorado Tourism Office, Arizona Department of Transportation, and many individual organizations and communities. Dr. Andereck is a Fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences (TALS).  She received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in Editorial Excellence from Journal of Travel Research in 2023; the Distinguished Colleague award from TALS in 2023; the Outstanding Alumnus award from the Clemson University Department of Parks Recreation and Tourism Management in 2012; and was a Fulbright Specialist at Holar University in Iceland in 2017.

Dr Jane Ali-Knight is a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University and is a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Australia. She is Programme Director of the award winning ‘Destination Leadership Programme’; leads the Festival and Events discipline; lectures at universities internationally and facilitates training and development in the field.

A recognised academic, she has presented at major international and national conferences, and has published widely in the areas of wine tourism and regional development; destination marketing and management; festival and event marketing and management, accessibility, and well-being. She has also edited seminal texts in Festival and Event Management. Jane has extensive experience in planning, designing, and delivering undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional courses and consultancy projects in tourism, festival, and event management both in the UK and overseas.

Jane is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Higher Education Academy and a Trustee of Women in Tourism; British Arts Festivals Association; Without Walls: Innovators in Outdoor Arts and Chair of Hidden Door Festival