The Hyper Tourism Academy

How can we move from promoting super-heroes to appreciating human-heroes? Using my research in the fields of postdisciplinarity, higher education and digital humanities, this talk will examine our global academic cultures of hyper productivity and hyper connectivity and reflect on which values those cultures take for granted. To do this I will introduce the identity of a contemporary super-hero 'The Hyper Tourism Researcher'. This ideal archetype will be presented to help us reflect on the questions of speed and busyness (why do we all run so much?), meaning and purpose (towards what end?), productivity (what are the values associated to quantity?) and connectivity (how do constant connectivity and infinite information impact the way we learn, think and produce knowledge?). I will present how ideal types shape our perception of excellence, our creativity and engagement with the world. I will then use this broader discussion to explore the idea that we are in a time of 'over-reactivity' and how for many scholars, after some years, hyper academic cultures result in stress, cynicism and detachment or abandonment. Finally, a series of hopeful 'human-hero' alternatives to the super-heroic archetype will be presented.