Keynote Speakers

Professor Erwin Losekoot

Erwin Losekoot PhD (AUT); MBA (Edin), BA (Strath) is currently Professor of Hospitality Studies at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. He leads one of three Professorships in the Stenden Hotel Management School which has over 2000 students at Diploma, Bachelor and Masters degree level.  Prior to his current appointment he was lecturing at RMIT University in Saigon, Vietnam, AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand, and at The Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde, UK. His research interests are in hospitality studies, the customer experience and quality assurance. His PhD was a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the airport customer experience using Auckland International Airport as a case study and has taught hospitality operations, accommodation management and qualitative research methods. He has published extensively in the form of journal papers and book chapters and presented at international conferences such as CHME, CAUTHE and TTRA.

Professor Alison Phipps

Alison Phipps is UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow and Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies. She is Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET). She was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Waikato University, Aotearoa New Zealand 2013-2016, Thinker in Residence at the EU Hawke Centre, University of South Australia in 2016, Visiting Professor at Auckland University of Technology, Visiting Professor at Otago University, NZ and Principal Investigator for AHRC Large Grant ‘Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the body, law and the state’ And now a co- Director of the Global Challenge Research Fund South South Migration Hub. She is an academic, activist and published poet.

Tawona Sithole

Better known as Ganyamatope (my ancestral family name) my heritage inspires me to make connections with other people through creativity, and the natural outlook to learn. Educated through the schooling system, and by elders through ‘pasichigare’ (my ancestors lifestyle), I benefit from having more than one way of knowing/learning. I am a storyteller, expressing myself through, and always learning more about, spoken word, poetry, theatre and mbira music. I am currently UNESCO artist-in-residence at the University of Glasgow in the team led by Professor Alison Phipps, who is the holder of the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts. I am co-founder of Seeds of Thought, a non-profit arts collective in Glasgow, Scotland.