Doris Carson
Lead Partner
Degrees: | PhD (James Cook University) |
I am research fellow at the Department of Geography, Umeå University, in northern Sweden. My research focuses broadly on the socio-economic development of small communities in sparsely populated, rural and remote areas. As a human/economic geographer I’m particularly interested in changing population mobilities (through migration, tourism, commuting etc) in these areas and how mobilities contribute to new development paths and innovation in rural communities. I have a background in tourism studies in Austria and completed a PhD about tourism innovation systems in remote resource peripheries at James Cook University (2011). I was then a post-doctoral researcher at the University of South Australia (2011-2014), working on several projects around remote tourism, Indigenous mobility and homelessness, and rural community wellbeing and resilience. I moved to Umeå in 2014 to work on a project about lifestyle-related mobilities in northern Sweden, and I’m now involved in several Swedish research projects focusing on the interrelationships between urbanisation, changing population mobilities, and the socio-economic future of small villages in sparsely populated areas. These projects involve collaborations and comparisons with researchers in Sweden, Australia, Alaska and Canada, and I look forward to working with students from any of these countries on topics around:
– New migration flows to rural and remote areas and their impacts on local communities
– Impacts of urbanisation and the growth of ‘regional centres’ on small rural and remote communities in the ‘hinterland’
– Innovation processes in rural and remote communities (particularly in ‘new industries’ as a form of economic diversification)
– Issues and opportunities for tourism development in small rural and remote communities