Dr Patricia Johnson

Patricia embarked on her academic career  to examine the perception and management of risk and security in tourist experiences, a study which involved traveling to Iran with the third Australian tour group to enter Iran after the Islamic revolution. Her research maintains an inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural focus and draws from the humanities and social sciences to engage concepts such as ideology, discourse, liminality, risk, cultural capital, the gaze and identity and difference to explore the emerging field of cosmopolitanism and questions relating to cultural literacy and global citizenship. In this, her work assumes a historical perspective to understand the discursive constitution of culture - that is, relationships of power and the ways in which knowledge of others is constructed, legitimated, reproduced and reworked. She maintains an expertise in analyzing travel media, in particular, travel writing to explore 'western' viewing positions over the foreign. Other research interests include destination development and cruise ship tourism and, in particular the roles of stakeholders in knowledge transfer processes and the role of volunteerism in the context of urban tourism. Patricia has been involved with a range of research projects and has provided strategic support to the school's Tourism Research Unit. Her teaching career also reflects this inter-disciplinary focus having taught a number of courses since 2001 at the University of Newcastle in the areas of tourism studies, media studies, cultural studies and sociology. Outside of academia she experience in business management in civil construction and has worked as a consultant devising and researching the effectiveness of workplace training in a range of industry applications.

Research Expertise
Dr Patricia C Johnson's primary research expertise lies within qualitative research method, but is also experienced in designing and carrying out quantitative research. As a researcher, her focus is interdisciplinary and lie within the areas of tourism studies and cultural studies. Patricia maintains an active and interdisciplinary research focus is which draws from English literature, cultural studies, sociology, geography, anthropology, gender studies and tourism studies to engage concepts such as the emerging area of cosmopolitanism, liminality, the tourist gaze and cultural capital. Other areas of interest in research include cruise ship tourism, nautical tourism, destination development and image development. She held a key research position examining stakeholder attitudes about the readiness of Newcastle as a home for cruise ship tourism and is actively engaged in furthering research efforts in this field. Other areas of research that she has been involved in include recreation specialisation and tourist image construction of PNG, wine tourism and volunteer tourism. As lecturer and a dedicated teacher, she is actively involved in research projects involving teaching and learning in the Faculty of Business and Law.

Teaching Expertise
Dr Patricia Johnson is Lecturer and Course Coordinator in Sustainable Tourism Management at Callaghan and Central Coast campuses in NSW and is Course Coordinator in the delivery of courses at the University of Newcastle Singapore. Courses include: Visitor Behaviour and Management, Leisure Behaviour and Management, Event Management, Tourism Policy and Planning, and Tourism Principles and Practices. She also supervises Honours and Postgraduate students in Tourism.  Patricia has substantial experience in teaching at an undergraduate level across disciplines and topic areas having held a number of teaching and lecturing positions at the University of Newcastle since 2001 in the fields of Tourism, Leisure and Recreation, Social Science, Cultural Studies (including media and film studies) and English Language and Open Foundation Studies. She is a committed teacher whose approach to teaching tourism is informed by this interdisciplinary teaching experience.