Rate My Professor Anna Carr

Professor Anna Carr serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Tourism within the Otago Business School at the University of Otago. Of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ruanui, and Ngāruahine iwi affiliations, she descends from a fifth-generation New Zealand tourism family linked to Te Paea Hinerangi, the principal tourist guide of the Pink and White Terraces in the 1880s. Prior to her academic career, Carr was the owner-operator of two adventure tourism businesses, Southern Alps Guiding and Wild Earth Adventures, and worked in various New Zealand national parks for the Departments of Conservation and Lands and Survey. Her academic background includes undergraduate studies in art history and Italian at the University of Auckland, followed by a PhD from the University of Otago, where she commenced postgraduate tourism studies in 1997. She was appointed as a lecturer in 2001 upon completing her PhD, promoted to senior lecturer in 2004/2005, and subsequently to Professor.

Carr's research interests center on tourism and recreation in protected areas, cultural landscapes, indigenous values, protected area management, and Indigenous/community tourism development. She has co-directed the Centre for Recreation Research since 2008 alongside Professor Brent Lovelock. From 2014 to 2020, she held a government Ministerial appointment to the Otago Conservation Board. Carr has been a visiting researcher at the University of Edinburgh (UK), Harstad Høgskolen and University of Stavanger (Norway), Wakayama University (Japan), Thompson Rivers University, University of Alberta, and University of Northern British Columbia (Canada). She is a member of the Canadian Mountain Network and an affiliate of the University of Otago Bioethics Department. Having supervised over 25 PhD students and more than 20 Master's students, she serves on the editorial boards of Tourism in Marine Environments, Journal of Ecotourism, Journal of Heritage Tourism, and Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism. Key publications include the edited books Indigenous Tourism: Australia and New Zealand (2017), Political Ecology of Tourism: Communities, Power and the Environment (2016), and Mountaineering Tourism (2015), as well as the article "Indigenous Peoples and Tourism: The Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Tourism" (Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2016). Additionally, she contributed to the Marsden Grant-funded project Good Nature Bad Nature (2020-2024).