Rate My Professor Neil Carr

Professor Neil Carr is Professor and Head of the Department of Tourism in the Otago Business School at the University of Otago. He obtained his PhD in tourism geography from the University of Exeter in 1998. His professional career commenced as a lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, progressed to lecturer and senior lecturer roles at the University of Queensland in Australia, and continued at the University of Otago where he began as a senior lecturer before advancing to professor and head of department.

Carr employs a multi-disciplinary social science and humanities lens to examine tourism and leisure, with key interests in freedom, rights, wellbeing, power, and empowerment. His research particularly addresses animals—especially dogs—in leisure, zoos, children and family holiday experiences, identity formation, risk, gender, and sexual dimensions of tourism and leisure. He has produced an extensive body of work, including authored and edited books such as Children's and Families' Holiday Experiences (2011), Dogs in the Leisure Experience (2015), Domestic Animals and Leisure (2015), Tourism and Archaeology: Sustainable Meeting Grounds (2013, co-edited with C. Walker), Tourism and Animal Welfare (2018, co-edited with D. Broom), Sex in Tourism: Exploring the Light and the Dark (2021, co-edited with L. Berdychevsky), and recent articles including 'Gull feeding in the Chinese urban leisurescape: A netnographic analysis' (2025, with Y. Yang), 'Critical reflections on performing the dramaturgy in research interviews' (2025, with K. R. Tunjungsari and S. Hayes), and ''Peeling back the layers': Power dynamics and saviour complex in South-South volunteer tourism' (2026, with R. Polus). In 2025, he was awarded the Shaw-Mannell Leisure Research Award, recognizing his innovative influence on leisure scholarship as the first New Zealand recipient. Carr is Editor-in-Chief of Tourism Cases and has previously edited Annals of Leisure Research.