Dr Katerina Antoniou

Katerina is the Course Leader of the BA (Hons) Hospitality and Tourism Management delivered at UCLan Cyprus. Her teaching covers topics on tourism motivation, culture and heritage, sustainable development, destination management, and the political impact of tourism.

Katerina is the author of the book Tourism as a Form of International Relations. Her publications also include scientific journal articles on Tourism and Peace, contributions to edited volumes, industry reports on Larnaka as a tourist destination, and practitioner manuals on Social Mediation.

Katerina examines tourism as a form of international relations to identify the political impact of tourist activity and the capacity of tourists to act as non-state political agents. This incorporates the contribution of tourism to peace through unconventional avenues – sustainable development, citizen diplomacy, and security – and the capacity of niche forms of tourism to foster intergroup reconciliation in divided societies. Her research has examined aspects of societal securitization, cosmopolitanism, cultural literacy, group membership, travel behaviour, Peer-2-Peer accommodation, social mediation and liminoid spaces in ways that inform peace tourism and peacebuilding tourism.

Katerina has been an invited expert and commentator in the press, on TV and the radio, including articles in The Telegraph and Agence France-Presse, Alpha TV, and Politis radio, discussing peace tourism, the political impact of tourism, and social mediation. She has been an invited speaker to the United States, the UK, Greece, South Korea, and Cyprus.

Katerina has also served as a trainer for the Cyprus Youth Council, as a facilitator of cross-cultural dialogue, and as a project manager for UN-led peacebuilding projects.