Events

Join us on 8 June at 20:00 at the Impulse Building' NcountR Room on the Wageningen University campus. Free entry.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to join a transdisciplinary gathering focused on placing trails at the center of scientific inquiry and practice. The symposium explores the emerging field of 'Trailology' — the study of trails, movement, mobility, landscape, pilgrimage, recreation, infrastructure, and the cultural and environmental meanings embedded in pathways across the world.

Programme

Welcome Session (09:30 – 10:30) 

Opening remarks and introduction by Martina Sedlakova and Shay Rabineau - 'What is Trailology?'

Session I — The Theory and Practice of Trailology (10:00 – 12:00)

Alexander Sorenson  (Binghamton University) — 'Meta-Hodos: Trail as Phenomenon, Modality, and Method'

Sarah Nance  (Binghamton University) — 'Trails, Performance, and the Creation of Invisible Structures'

Shay Rabineau  (Binghamton University) — 'The Dead Sea Loop: Trails, Nationalism, and Environmental Destruction at the Lowest Point on Earth'

Session II — Practical Dimensions of Trailology (13:00 – 15:00)

Steen Kobberø-Hansen (ERA) & Hans Stoops (IMBA Europe) — 'Trails in Europe: Urban Planning, Land Management, and Environment'

Andras Molnar  (University of Pannonia) — 'The Spectrum of Pilgrimage: From Sacred Walking to Secular Hiking' 

Session III — Strategic Dimensions of Trailology: Open Discussion (15:15 – 17:15)

Discussion themes include:

* What meaningful roles do trails already play in “transformative mobilities,” and how might these be better studied?

* Have trail academics and practitioners engaged enough with critical tourism studies?

* Which forms of movement typically fall outside the boundaries of trail studies?

* Can trail scholars contribute to conversations around migration routes, human trafficking, war, and conflict?

* How can trailology help scholars better understand how humans and animals move through and inhabit the world?

Screening -- 'The Anti Expedition' (Bob Henderson) (20:00, Impulse Building, Speakers Corner)

About Trailology

'Trailology' refers to the field of study and knowledge relating to trails. The symposium brings together scholars, planners, practitioners, mobility researchers, outdoor organizations, and cultural thinkers to explore trails as social, environmental, political, and experiential infrastructures.

Partners & Supporting Organizations

Centre for Expertise on Transformative Mobilities (CENTMOB), Wageningen University & Research, University of Pannonia, International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA Europe), European Hiking Federation, Pilgrimage Academy, Binghamton University and the World Trails Network

Join us for a screening of The Anti-Expedition (https://www.antiexpeditionfilm.com/) on 8 June at 20:00 at the Impulse Building' Speakers Corner on the Wageningen University campus. Free entry.

50 years ago, 3 mountaineers hiked deep into a sacred, hidden Himalayan valley – known as a "Beyul" to Tibetan Buddhists. Overlooking this Beyul was Mount Tseringma, the most holy of all mountains, yet unconquered by the era's increasing number of mountaineering expeditions. The Tibetan Sherpa people believed that to summit Tseringma would bring her wrath. But, times were changing and old traditions were falling out of favour...

Decades later, Bob, a young professor of outdoor education, was searching for an ethos to guide his teaching when he stumbled upon a film made in 1971. The film depicted three mountaineers who chose not to summit a Himalayan mountain out of respect for local beliefs. It explored concepts like "ecophilosophy" and ethical travel. For Bob, it was this film, and the work of Sigmund Kvaløy (one of the three mountaineers), that spurred a lifelong passion for"place responsive" outdoor adventure.

In The Anti Expedition, Bob and a team of seasoned adventure guides, return the 1971 film to the Sherpa community of the Rolwaling Valley. In a fascinating look at how five decades has affected both the valley and its people, they rediscover that it's not the destination that makes the journey meaningful.

The second edition of the Tourism, Memory and Heritage conference explores what happens when tourism encounters contested pasts. Focusing on sites such as Holocaust memorials, former slave plantations, war landscapes, and museums holding colonial collections, the conference asks how guided tours and other visitor experiences shape the emotional and political dimensions of cultural memory. What stories are told, by whom, and to what ends? How do feelings such as grief, pride, shame, empathy, nostalgia, or anger circulate through these spaces? And what tensions arise when tourism intersects with ongoing debates about history, justice, and representation?

Hosted in the context of Emmanuel Adu-Ampong's ERC-funded project Frictions of Space: the generative tensions of tourism in slavery and colonial heritage tourism, this gathering centers on the emotional geographies of tour(ism) encounters. Contested heritage sites are not neutral backdrops; they are charged environments where different communities attach divergent meanings, memories, and expectations. Increasingly, these places are shaped through cultural productions such as guided tours, performances, exhibitions, memorial events, and public art. Such practices offer powerful narrative and sensory ways of (re)activating cultural memories and grappling with the contradictions linking past, present, and future.

The conference brings together scholars, practitioners, and societal actors in a transdisciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, empirical, practical, and policy dimensions of tourism’s role in cultural memory. Key themes include the emotional assemblages of visitor encounters, the embodied and interpretive work of tour guides, and the affective politics surrounding contested heritage.

The program begins with a Memory Walk in Amsterdam (1 June 2026), followed by two full conference days at Wageningen University & Research (2–3 June 2026).Frictions of space: the generative tensions of slavery and colonial heritage tourism

Feel free to direct any questions or queries to frictions@wur.nl  

Check out highlights from the 2023 inaugural edition of the conference

CENTMOB's inaugural Annual Lecture by Professor Derek H. Alderman examines Black automobility under Jim Crow racism as more than moving from one place to another. Inspired by but also moving beyond the iconic travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book, it argues that African American driving in the southeastern USA involved resistant mobilities practices, emotional labor, and an oppositional politics of belonging. Drawing on Black Geographies, critiques of southern hospitality, critical mobilities, and oral histories collected with Knoxville, Tennessee’s Beck Cultural Exchange Center, the talk explores how Black motorists during segregation planned routes, navigated hostile spaces, protected children, and managed the atmospheres of fear while asserting dignity and freedom. In doing so, it reframes ordinary driving practices as acts of care, survival, resistance, and place-making. The value of examining the broader social and biopolitical significance of ordinary mobility practices remains highly relevant at a time when driving and traveling while Black remains fraught and deeply felt. The presentation concludes by addressing the need to translate critical conceptions of race and mobility to teachers in the classroom. This collaborative educational work is especially urgent in today’s American political landscape, as struggles over history, civil rights, and public memory shape what can be taught, remembered, and realized socially and spatially.

The 2026 Annual Lecture takes place on 4 June between 12:30-14:00 in the Impulse Building (Impulse Building). Attendance is open to all. Please register your attendance by clicking on the following link: REGISTRATION FORM 

About the speaker: Derek H. Alderman is a Chancellor’s Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee and an internationally recognized scholar of cultural geography whose work explores the connections between place, memory, and social justice. For nearly thirty years, his research has centered on how the contested histories of the African American Freedom Struggle are remembered,  interpreted, and emotionally experienced through tourism, museums, monuments, and everyday geographies of street/place names. Alderman is well known for community-engaged research that combines academic inquiry with public impact. He has collaborated with civil rights groups, museums, activist communities, local governments, and the U.S. Department of the Interior to promote more inclusive approaches to memorialization, naming, and place-making. His work, which includes over 180 articles, book chapters, and essays, is published in top scholarly journals and public outlets such as The Conversation and is often cited by scholars, educators, policymakers, and media. To date, Alderman has been quoted in or contributed to more than 330 news stories, documentaries, radio and TV broadcasts, blogs, and podcasts. His co-authored book, Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum (University of Georgia Press), represents a significant intervention in debates over how plantation museums (mis)represent slavery, emphasizing the emotional, ethical, and political importance of reforming heritage interpretation and visitor experiences.

Alderman is a Fellow and Past President (2017–2018) of the American Association of Geographers, and has received some of its highest honors, including the Media Achievement Award, the Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award, and, in 2026, the Gilbert F. White Distinguished Public Service Award. He is a co-founder of Tourism RESET, an international, interdisciplinary initiative that examines tourism and travel as a source of racial injustices and, historically, a means of Black resistance and self-determination. Most recently, Dr. Alderman’s focus has turned to The Living Black Atlas, an initiative that highlights Black-led mapping, storytelling, and knowledge production as acts that challenge the politics of memory, place, and belonging. Going beyond the violent cartographies of racism and colonialism, The Atlas encourages us to rethink what a map is, who creates maps, and the work that maps should do to affirm freedom.

The fourth annual Environmental and Climate Mobilities Network (ECMN) conference, this year held at Wageningen University, will build on the successes of the first three editions by gathering researchers and other professionals from all disciplines, continents, and career stages to examine the nexus of environment, climate and mobilities. 

ECMN is a transdisciplinary network connecting people working on migration and human (im)mobility in the context of environmental and climate change.  

This year’s conference concentrates on the following themes: Politics; Inter- and  transdisciplinary collaborations and methodologies; Land- and waterscapes; and Time. 

CENTMOB members organising this conference: Ingrid Boas & Maia Brons 

Prof.dr Machiel (M.A.J.) Lamers, Professor of Tourism and Environmental Change, will give his inaugural lecture on Friday, 24 April 2026 at 16:00 at the Omnia building (105), Wageningen Campus, Hoge Steeg 2, 6708 PH Wageningen.

Join us for the inaugural lecture and the reception afterwards to celebrate this very special moment!

Professors and emeritus professors of Wageningen University & Research and professors of affiliated universities: If you would like to take part in the procession, please send an email to lesley.janssens@wur.nl before 23 April 2026. 

For directions, please go to: wur.eu/contact 

📍 Speaker’s Corner, Impulse Building, Wageningen University & Research campus, Stippeneng

📅 24 April 2026

🕘 Coffee from 9:30 | Programme 10:00–14:45, with lunch included

Registration required - Now closed

The WUR Tourism Day is organized on the occasion of Prof. dr. Machiel Lamers’ inaugural address and the launch of the WUR Centre of Expertise for Transformative Mobilities. The aim of the day is to showcase excellent WUR-based research on environmentally and socially just transformations in and through tourism, and to discuss the way forward for tourism research at WUR. Students and staff of WUR and beyond, with an interest in tourism, are all invited to join the discussions. 

Programme

9:30 Tea/coffee

10:00 Word of welcome by Prof. dr. Machiel Lamers

10:10 Launch of Centre of Expertise for Transformative Mobilities

10:20 Panel 1: Tourism and Environmental Transformations

• Dr. Bas Amelung: “Tourism and the energy transition”

• Anisja Obermann: “Environmental stewardship at an Antarctic mobility-hub”

• Dr. Stasja Koot: “Environmentourism in South Africa and the need for limitarianism”

11:10 Panel 2: Tourism and Social Justice 

• Dr. Emmanuel Adu-Ampong: “Frictional encounters: tourism, moral emotions and justice 

making”

• Ergun Erkocu: “Historicomaterialism of water infrastructures and built environment on 

Curacao”

• Dr. Maartje Roelofsen: “Rethinking home in the face of intersecting mobilities”

12:00 Discussion

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Panel 3: Transformative Tourism Approaches

• Dr. Meghann Ormond: “Touring towards transformation”

• Dr. Jillian Student: “Stimulating transformation in tourism through simulations”

• Martina Sedlakova: “Beyond Responsible Changemakers in Tourism”

14:10 Discussion

14:40 Closing remarks

#NLTourismResearchNetwork session on ongoing and topical research in the Dutch tourism context

CENTMOB's Machiel Lamers and Meghann Ormond will speak in the confererence breakout session 'Mobilities beyond tourism: The interconnections between tourism, migration and everyday mobility in a changing world' on 2 April at NRIT's Trendcongres Toerisme 2026 in Deventer.

Conference website: https://www.toerismecongres.nl/index.html 

→ Read the article 'Mobilities beyond tourism: tourism in a world of unequal movement' that gives an overview of the talks: https://www.celth.nl/en/news/5688/mobilities-beyond-tourism-tourism-in-a-world-of-unequal-movement.html 

Tourism is one of multiple mobilities responding to environmental and societal challenges in our world today, such as labour and asylum migration or everyday mobility in cities and regions in the Netherlands. Yet, research and societal debates on each of these mobilities occurs in relative isolation, with little discussion on the key commonalities, the differences and the interactions between them. For example, flows of migrants typically make use of the same transportation systems as tourists, but are politically framed in very differently. While the first are seen as fleeing climate extremes, the second are enjoying coolcations in Scandinavia or considered digital nomads in the Mediterranean. By developing forms of regenerative tourism, major sustainability transformations that our Dutch society facing, including the maintenance of public transport in rural regions, could be supported.

Meghann's talk during this session is entitled 'Who Gets to Tell the Story of the City? Tourism, Migration and the Politics of Urban Heritage'

Tourism and migration are often analysed as distinct forms of mobility, yet they intersect in urban space, infrastructures, labour markets and public narratives. Building on debates around the tourism-migration nexus, this talk examines how tourism contributes to shaping the social meanings of migration. Drawing on research and practice from Migrantour Utrecht, it explores migrant-led walking tours as spaces where narratives about neighbourhoods and the people living within them are collaboratively produced and contested. In Migrantour, people with migration backgrounds shift from being framed as objects of representation to active interpreters and narrators of place, linking personal trajectories to wider histories of colonialism, mobility and urban change. At the same time, turning migration stories into tourism experiences - even in the form of educational tourism - raises tensions around touristification, narrative commodification and neighbourhood gentrification. By focusing on the process of tour co-creation, the talk highlights how responsible tourism can serve as a site of narrative negotiation and civic learning, offering insights for tourism scholarship on mobility justice, urban transformation and the politics of storytelling.

When: 19 March 2026, 12:00-13:00

Where: Lumen 2, Wageningen University campus

Reconfiguring the nature tourism experience: A posthumanist critique through immersive open-world video games

Zhaoyuan Wang

This presentation examines how digital environments influence tourism by considering the ideas of “being away” and existential authenticity. Research shows that virtual settings can produce both forms of experience, although the effects often remain brief and unstable. To understand this paradox, the presentation adopts a posthumanist framework in which the tourist becomes a distributed assemblage of player, avatar and interface. In this view, nature also takes on an active role as an agent within the digital world. The presentation introduces three guiding concepts: experiential displacement, body as mediation and nature as actant. These ideas help explain why virtual tourism feels vivid and convincing while also fading quickly. Virtual tourism should not be understood as a replacement for physical travel. Instead, it represents a distinct way of experiencing the world that holds its own value within the wider tourism landscape.

Zhaoyuan Wang is a first-year PhD student in Tourism at University of Girona. She began her doctoral studies in September 2025. Her research explores how immersive open-world video games reshape the experience of nature-based tourism, viewed through posthumanist and new materialist perspectives. Her interests include existential authenticity in virtual tourism, the transformation of bodily perception, and the agential role of “nature” within digital environments. Her doctoral thesis seeks to establish a conversation between tourism studies, game studies and media philosophy. It aims to understand how virtual nature experiences, as an emerging phenomenon, challenge established ideas within tourism research. She employs qualitative methods that include autoethnography, in-depth interviews and thematic analysis.

Life, death, and the pursuit of the true self

Shaohua Wang

“For I was once already boy and girl, thicket and bird, and mute fish in the waves.” — Empedocles

Death, as an inevitability that no living being can escape, often provokes anxiety and fear. Beyond the instinctive reactions we share with other animals, the metaphysical nature of human beings leads us to experience apprehension even long before death draws near. Such fear is both understandable and ultimately futile. We did not fear the time before we were born, so it is worth asking why we should fear the time after we cease to exist. Yet discussions of this philosophical kind rarely offer genuine comfort. In response, some people devote themselves to extending the length of their lives, while others seek to enrich life by creating vivid memories and meaningful experiences, such as travelling, in order to deepen their sense of being alive. This speech aims to open a discussion on an ontological transformation. It considers life and death, the tensions between existential thought and more-than-human perspectives, and the possibility of approaching death with clarity and composure so that we may learn how to live more fully.

Shaohua Wang completed her PhD, 'Spiritual Tourism: A Sisyphean Endeavour', at the University of Girona in June 2025 and is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Tourism at the same institution. Her research examines the philosophical and ontological dimensions of tourism, with a particular focus on spiritual and existential tourism, alienation, nature-based experiences, and more-than-human perspectives. Drawing on posthumanist thought and Eastern philosophies including Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, she seeks to advance a critical ontological understanding of tourism as a transformative practice shaping human and more-than-human relations. Her methodological expertise includes thematic analysis, constructivist grounded theory, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and autoethnography, complemented by ongoing engagement with post-qualitative approaches.

When: Wednesday 18 March 19:45 live music 20:15 

Where: Café Loburg, downtown Wageningen

Talks by Prof. Machiel Lamers, Cheryl van Adrichem, and Martijn Duineveld, with music from the Downtown Grooves

Talk 1: Tourism, including both leisure and business travel, represents a worldwide, growing and complex mobility system interrelating in many paradoxical ways with climate change. On the one hand there is a rapidly growing global interest in nature experiences in the Polar Regions, tropical coral reefs and other vulnerable landscapes. On the other hand, through fossil fuel-based car mobility, aviation, cruising and accommodation, tourism is a major contributor of global greenhouse gases. In fact, weather extremes, floods, droughts, sea level rise and other climate-related impacts are increasingly affecting tourism destinations and activities. Machiel Lamers will illustrate these paradoxical tourism-environmental relations based on research in the Caribbean and the Polar Regions, arguing that instead of simply seeing tourism as a blessing or curse, we should study and tackle tourism as a complex societal syndrome, characterized by particular symptoms and requiring context dependent measures at different scales.

Talk 2: The fossil fuel, agriculture, steel, cement, and chemical industries are some of the usual suspects that come to mind when compiling a short list of industries that contribute to global warming*. Tourism is often not included in that list. Yet, in 2013, the carbon footprint of tourism was estimated at 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike other industries, these emissions continued in the last decade to rise. Why? Cheryl van Adrichem and Martijn Duineveld argue that part of the answer is that the seriousness and injustice of the climate problem is not truly being acknowledged within tourism. To put it bluntly: both tourists and the tourism industry are notorious climate deniers. But while many tourists live in denial to justify their own travel behavior, the tourism industry deliberately uses climate denial to protect its business interests. And this is just one of the forms of climate obstruction: they also engage in greenwashing, promise false solutions and self-regulation, and engage in resistance to climate policy. The good news is that it is relatively easy to undo the climate obstruction of the tourism industry. Van Adrichem and Duineveld will provide some suggestions about how you can contribute to this.

More info: sciencecafewageningen.nl 

CENTMOB's Maartje Roelofsen will be giving a keynote at the conference in Kyoto.

Conference description:

Contemporary society is increasingly shaped by movement — of people, goods, capital, ideas, and technologies. Building on John Urry and Mimi Sheller’s influential idea of “the social as mobility,” scholars argue that social life can no longer be understood as static or bounded, but as constantly re-made through mobilities. While this shift invites critical debate — particularly about how mobilities relate to older notions of “society” — it highlights how movement actively produces new social realities rather than simply connecting existing ones.

Tourism offers one of the clearest lenses through which these dynamics become visible. Despite crises ranging from pandemics and natural disasters to economic shocks and geopolitical conflict, tourism remains a defining social force of our time. As a form of tourism mobilities, it reshapes cultures, economies, environments, and power relations across global and local scales. Research on tourism mobilities, especially in the Asia-Pacific context, is therefore vital for understanding contemporary societal change — and for reflecting critically on how mobile futures might be shaped more thoughtfully and justly.

Find out more: https://atlas-euro.org/2026-3-kyoto 

Freedom Tours Wageningen and Migrantour Utrecht have been shortlisted for the 2026 Wageningen University & Research (WUR) Transdisciplinary Research Award, recognizing innovative projects that connect research, education, and public engagement.

Since 2021, these initiatives have turned cities into “living classrooms,” exploring how migration, gender, sexuality and disability intersect with identity, heritage, rights and belonging. The projects, supported by CENTMOB's Meghann Ormond and Chizu Sato, involve local residents with diverse backgrounds and experiences as co-creators of public educational walking tours. Through months-long participatory design and research processes using participatory mapping, creative storytelling methods, archival research, and intercultural dialogue, they together actively produce knowledge about how people and places are remembered, contested, and made meaningful.

The co-created tours in Wageningen and Utrecht showcase how universities can work collaboratively with local community members and organisations to foster civic learning, participation, and reflection. So far, more than 2250 people - students, local residents, municipal and national civil servants, and city council members - have taken the tours. And new tours are currently being developed in both cities with co-creators - many of whom can be seen in the photo and are  introduced in the websites below.

These projects are also made possible thanks to ongoing collaboration with and support from Stichting Collective Nouns' De Voorkamer, Gemeente Utrecht, the international Migrantour network, de bblthk, Wageningen Inclusief, Thuis Wageningen, Gemeente Wageningen, Shout Wageningen, Vrijheidskwartier, WageningenDOET, WUR's Diversity & Inclusion and Learning Ecosystem Wageningen, among many others.

Being shortlisted for the WUR Transdisciplinary Research Award not only recognises how participatory collaborations like Migrantour Utrecht and Freedom Tours Wageningen are actively transforming approaches to public pedagogy but also acknowledges the incredible energy, knowledge, and commitment needed from so many people to develop and nourish transdisciplinary research and peer-learning.

All shortlisted teams will pitch their projects to a WUR audience at Omnia on Friday, 6 March at 11:00, with the audience selecting the winner. *That means we need as many people as possible to attend and support us!* Registration is required - WUR employees can sign up via this link: https://wageningenur4.sharepoint.com/sites/vivahome-wur/SitePages/en/Dit-zijn-de-nominaties-voor-de-Research-Awards.aspx 

Find out more about the projects:

- Migrantour Utrecht  https://migrantourutrecht.nl/  

- Freedom Tours Wageningen https://www.freedomtourswageningen.nl/ 

The seminar Platformed Housing & Home brings together international scholars to explore how digital platforms are reshaping housing, labour, domestic life, and power relations. Over two days, the event examines the social, political, and economic consequences of platformisation across different urban and cultural contexts. Via the link below, you will find the full programme, including session details, keynote presentations, and practical information about the venue and travel.

Organiser: Maartje Roelofsen

For further information and registration: https://centreforspaceplacesociety.com/2026/02/03/seminar-platformed-housing-and-home-2/ 

When: Wednesday 25 February, 15:30 - 17:00  

Where: Gaia 1, Gaia Building, Wageningen Campus (in-person only) 

Dr. Pau Obrador about the presentation: my academic contribution has been the introduction of Heideggerian ideas of dwelling into tourism studies, reconnecting tourism with concepts often framed as its opposites: home, familiarity, and everyday life. However, my early work was largely theoretical and didn't engage with actual tourist dwellings. This presentation reflects on my subsequent efforts to develop dwelling perspectives on the spaces of tourism, linking philosophical debates on dwelling to the temporary dwellings of tourism. I review work on domesticity, family tourism, mobile neighbouring in campervans, and how this is expanding into the sharing economy. A dwelling perspective foregrounds the practices of home-making and (un)making that take place on the move, reframing home from a noun into a verb. It also raises questions about how domestic spaces change through tourism and how the digital age blurs home-tourism boundaries. 

When: Friday, 13 February 2026 from  12:30-14:00

Where: Lumen Building, Rooms Lumen 1/2, Wageningen University & Research

Edward Huijbens will present observations and ideas assembled during his three months sabbatical in autumn 2025. He undertook a journey using only public transport from Arnhem to Kathmandu and collected his insights into a book under the working title: An abundance of elsewheres. A convivial geography of the Alpine-Himalayan orogeny. In this session, he will share these and the details of his journey to open a conversation about how we are all part and parcel of Earth system dynamics extending even into the recesses of deep geologic time.

Everyone is welcome to come to the presentation.