Dr Mark Hampton

Dr Mark Hampton joined the University of Kent in 2005 as a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management at Kent Business School (KBS). In 2014, he was promoted to Reader. In January 2017, Dr Hampton joined the School of Anthropology and Conservation as a joint appointment with KBS. Before the University of Kent, Mark held lecturing posts at the Universities of Surrey and Portsmouth.

Dr Hampton has a long-term research interest in the geographies of tourism and development, specifically the socio-economic impacts of tourism in developing countries and especially in South-East Asia. Mark's PhD was awarded by the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, where he also studied for his first degree.

Dr Hampton's research is based on fieldwork and he has extensive field experience in South-East Asia, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and South Atlantic, and Mark's research has been funded by: the World Bank; Commonwealth Secretariat; Foreign & Commonwealth Office; DFID; SECO (Swiss overseas aid); Ministry of Tourism Malaysia; British Academy; and the British Council.

In 2006, Dr Hampton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS). He is currently Visiting Professor of Tourism at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

Dr Mark Hampton is a member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology.

Dr Hampton's research focuses on the geographies of tourism in developing countries, especially concerning its socio-economic impacts in islands and coastal areas. Mark is particularly interested in how tourism can lift communities out of poverty whilst minimising its negative effects on the local environment. He has worked on backpackers and small-scale tourism, scuba-dive tourism, island tourism, cross-border tourism, spatial changes in coastal destinations and urban tourism enclaves.

Dr Hampton has written/edited four books, the most recent being Backpacker Tourism and Economic Development (Routledge, 2013) and Tourism and Inclusive Growth in Small Island Developing States with Julia Jeyacheya (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2013).

Mark has written more than 50 journal papers and book chapters with publications in leading journals (including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Geographies, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Environment and Planning A, Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, Review of International Political Economy, Third World Quarterly and Geographische Zeitschrift) and has given over 120 conference papers, often as Keynote or Invited Speaker.

• SE315: Land Use Systems
• DI522: Research Project
• DI998: Dissertation – Conservation
  
• DI875: Principles and Practice of Ecotourism
• DI876: Research Methods for Social Science

Previous research students

• Juliane Thieme: ‘The political economy of backpacker tourism consumption and production in Colombia.’ Primary supervisor (with Krystin Zigan and Carmen Stoian) PhD 2018.
• Samantha Cameron:  ‘Ecotourism’s dirty laundry? Exploring the relationship between participation, equity and conservation around protected areas in Madagascar.’ Second supervisor (with Dr Robert Fish) MRes 2017.
• Wei Lei (Shirley) Chin: ‘An analysis of the tourism cluster development model and the links between destination competitiveness and socio-economic prosperity. The cases of two small developing economies: Bali and Brunei.’ Primary supervisor (with Janet Haddock-Fraser) PhD 2013.
• Joern Fricke: ‘The evolution of networks in backpacker destinations –  case studies from Mexico and Malaysia.’ Primary supervisor (with Alison Dean) PhD 2013.
  
• Caroline Walsh: ‘Volunteer tourism and the marine conservation sector in the UK.’ Primary supervisor (with Janet Haddock-Fraser) MRes 2012.
• Timothy Jeonglyeol Lee: ‘Conflict and collaboration between different stakeholder sectors in heritage tourism development in a newly industrialised country.’ (University of Surrey) Second supervisor (with Michael Riley) PhD 2005.

Dr Hampton is available to give comment on the impacts of tourism in developing countries but especially in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).