Rate My Professor Nika Balomenou

Dr. Nika Balomenou is an Associate Professor in Tourism and Visual Sociology in the School of Management at Swansea University, a position she has held since September 2021. Prior to this, she spent 12 years at the University of Hertfordshire's Business School, where she served as head of the Enterprise and Value Research Group and as School Research Tutor. Balomenou earned her PhD from the University of Hertfordshire in 2011 with a thesis titled "Using volunteer-employed photography to inform tourism planning decisions: the case study of St David’s peninsula in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park." Currently, she is the Programme Director for the MSc International Tourism Management and teaches several key modules, including Contemporary Issues in Tourism (MN-2058), Visitor Experience Design and Management (MN-2062), Tourism Planning (MN-3060), and Business Project Foundations (MN-M595). She also supervises PhD students on diverse topics such as the narrative of ADHD in the workplace, authentic representation of Ainu culture in tourism, and the impact of commercialization on risk perception in mountaineering.

Balomenou's research centers on visual methods and the application of participant-generated images in tourism studies, with a particular emphasis on empowering host communities. Her areas of expertise include tourism, visual sociology, strategic tourism planning, community empowerment, national parks, and host-guest interactions and experiences. She has made significant contributions through publications in prestigious journals. Notable works include "Photographs in tourism research: Prejudice, power, performance and participant-generated images" published in Tourism Management (2019), co-authored with Brian Garrod; "Making sense of tourists' photographs using canonical variate analysis" also in Tourism Management (2017); and "A Review of Participant-Generated Image Methods in the Social Sciences" in the Journal of Mixed Methods Research (2016). Additional outputs encompass conference papers such as "Utopia or Dystopia? Tourism as invasion and the development of Kavos, Corfu, into a tourism destination" (2024) and book chapters like "Visual research methods: volunteer-employed photography (VEP)" in the Handbook of Research Methods for Marketing Management. Balomenou enhances the academic field as a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Destination Marketing & Management and Tourism Planning & Development. She co-chairs the Visual Methods in Tourism Research Special Interest Group of the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research (ATLAS) and is actively involved in the Centre for Visitor Economy Research at Swansea.