Professor Jillian Rickly

BA (Indiana University), BA (Indiana University), MA (Indiana University), PhD (Indiana University)

Department: Marketing, Tourism and Analytics
E-mail: Jillian.Rickly@nottingham.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 115 8466493
Location: B74 (North Building, Jubilee Campus)

Jillian Rickly (PhD, FHEA) is Professor of Tourism with a background in geography and nearly two decades of experience with interdisciplinary social science research and pedagogy. She is globally recognized for her work on tourist experience, tourism geographies, lifestyle mobilities, accessible tourism, and tourism marketing.

Professor Rickly joined the Nottingham University Business School in 2014, where she has focused her research activities in two main areas:
(1) Authenticity/alienation in tourism motivation and experience. She has spent much of her career working in this area, with her greatest scholarly contributions coming from her theorization of the role of authenticity and alienation in tourist motivation and experience across numerous contexts (heritage, dark, nature, adventure, smart). She serves as the Editor for the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Authenticity, which is a leading archive on the topic.
(2) Accessible tourism and disability mobilities. In recent years, she has developed a new research agenda related to disability, accessibility and travel behaviour. Much of this work has focused on people with disabilities who have assistance dogs and examines the role of this human-animal relationship to travel behaviour across the transport, travel and tourism sectors. This has inspired collaborations with Guide Dogs for the Blind and Assistance Dogs UK. New projects now stretch into various niches of accessible tourism, including disability representation in adventure tourism, the accessibility of accessibility information by service providers, and conceptualizing the potential of occupational therapy to the field. She is the co-editor of the Tourism Geographies Collection on Accessible Tourism, co-guest editor of special issue on "Accessible Tourism Geographies and Disability Mobilities", and co-editor of the Handbook of Accessible Tourism (under contract with De Gruyter, expected spring 2025).


Areas of Expertise
Tourist experience; Tourism motivation; Tourism mobilities and behaviour; Tourism marketing; Authenticity studies; Accessible tourism; Critical disabilities studies; Critical animal studies; Qualitative methodologies; Outdoor recreation; Tourism niches (heritage, nature, adventure, dark, smart)