Dr Afiya Holder
Dr Afiya Holder is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor within The Business School and Tourism Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU). Afiya is internationally recognised for her professional experience and research focuses on tourist behaviour and social sustainability in tourism and events. Afiya’s research pathways cover topical areas including diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI), sustainability, tourism marketing and event leveraging as well as marketing and digital transformation for social good. She serves in the roles of Associate Editor and Podcast Producer for Tourism Geographies and is a Review Editor at Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism.
Daniel Abercrombie
Daniel Abercrombie is the Programme & Events Manager at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. He has over 15 years’ experience of events programming, working in partnership with a wide range of artists and cultural organisations in Scotland and internationally. Daniel is also the Associate Director for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, which takes places throughout Scotland each October. His work is rooted in partnerships, collaboration and shared creativity.
Professor Gayle McPherson
Professor Gayle McPherson is Director of the Centre for Culture, Sport and Events and holds a Chair in Events and Cultural Policy at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). She has led a wide range of large research and consultancy projects for over 25 years, utilising a range of mixed methods and leads a team of staff at CCSE. Her research interests revolve around the interventions of the local and national state and wider agencies in events and festivity of all types and the social and cultural impacts of large-scale events and festival on communities. She is particularly interested in the contested role of events and festivals in leveraging social change and is how this is presented for policy makers and the public.
Hazel Johnson
Hidden Door is an Edinburgh based, volunteer run arts charity that opens up unique and often forgotten spaces in the city as venues for temporary arts events, showcasing some of Scotland's most exciting emerging creative talent.
In over nearly ten years of working with Hidden Door Hazel has held a number of roles, as the organisation has grown and evolved, taking on the role of Festival Director in early 2023. Hazel has extensive experience working in both the arts and in heritage; her professional drivers lie in understanding what makes good places and thriving communities, specifically understanding and advocating for the role of - and access to - heritage and culture within this.
Professor Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is Professor of Urban Experiences at the University of Westminster where he leads a cross-school research community dedicated to Sustainable Cities and the Urban Environment. His research analyses festivals and events from a place-based perspective and he has written extensively about the relationships between events and the spaces used to host them. He has written two monographs “Events and Urban Regeneration” (Routledge, 2012) and “Events in the City” (Routledge, 2016); and he has co-edited several other books including the recent open access volume “Festivals and the City: The Contested Geographies of Urban Events” (University of Westminster Press, 2022). He works in between the field of events studies and urban studies, and over the past twenty years his research has been published in various tourism, planning, geography and events journals. Professor Smith’s latest work focuses on festival and events staged in parks, and a series of new papers drawing upon his research in London’s parks have just been published.