President:
Michael A. Di Giovine, West Chester University.
Michael A. Di Giovine is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at West Chester University; Director of its Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, and Museum Studies Program; and Director of the Ethnographic Field School on Sustainable Food and Cultural Heritage in Perugia, Italy. An Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael is also a former tour operator whose research in Europe (Italy, Spain) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam and Cambodia) focuses primarily on the intersection of tourism/pilgrimage, heritage, and sustainability. The founding President of the Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism (CHAT) at the American Anthropological Association, and a member of its Task Force on Cultural Heritage (2013-2016), he is also an expert-member of ICOMOS and its International Cultural Tourism Committee (ICTC) and was the longtime Convenor of the AAA’s Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group (ATIG). The author of The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage and Tourism (Lexington Books, 2009), Michael has authored or edited over fifteen special issues and volumes, and numerous articles and encyclopedia entries. An internationally renowned expert on tourism and heritage, he has been featured on National Public Radio, FOX, ABC News Australia, Vogue, The Economist, and National Geographic, and has keynoted several conferences including that of the United Nations World Tourism Organization in Hamedan, Iran (2018). He is the Book Reviews Editor of The Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, and is the series editor of The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility and Society with Bloomsbury.
President-Elect:
This position will be elected for the first time in the next election cycle. Learn about positions for which you could run right now!
Secretary:
Hannah Wadle, Adam-Mickiewicz University & University of Barcelona
Hannah Wadle is a UK- and Germany-trained Social Anthropologist. She holds a postdoctoral position at the University of Barcelona in the ECR FOODCIRCUITS project and is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology at Adam-Mickiewicz University (PL). Currently, she conducts transnational ethnographic research on migrant labour and seasonal food consumption in Germany’s asparagus industry. In the past, she has explored post-socialist tourism and heritage activism in post-Prussian, rural Poland. Her publications span post-Cold War tourism, ambivalent heritage landscapes, festival and film production, places of longing, cosmopolitanism, and imagining alternative futures through art, tourism and heritage.
Treasurer:
Erica Walters, Harvard University.
Erica Walters is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist with Living Heritage Anthropology. She focuses on applied anthropology; using research to make tangible improvements to the rights indigenous peoples have to lands, food, worldview, and objects. In addition to her role at Living Heritage, she works on grant-funded research in the Tribal Historic Preservation Office for The Delaware Tribe of Indians. She is pursuing a Masters of Anthropology at Harvard University.
Communications Chair:
Joe Quick, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Joe Quick is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester. His research engages indigenous civil society in Latin America, with a well-established focus on community-based tourism organizations in highland Ecuador, and more recent research on uses of social media among indigenous youth throughout South America.
Program Chair:
Celia Tuchman-Rosta.
Celia Tuchman-Rosta investigates the effects of tourism, national policy, and discourses of intangible heritage on the creative and economic development of classical Cambodian dance. She is currently co-editing a volume on Cambodia’s intangible heritage, and pursuing a project on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism in the Southeast Asian region.
Member at Large – Heritage seat:
Jessica Christie, East Carolina University.
Jessica Joyce Christie is Full Professor in the School of Art and Design at East Carolina University. My research has focused on Indigenous cultures in the Southwest and Northwest of North America, the Maya area, Inka studies, and more recently Hawai`i. My methodologies come from archaeology, visual anthropology, landscape and heritage studies. Tourism is a theme which links them together. As of summer 2025, I am writing on article manuscripts of two case studies, one for Tourism Geographies, and editing a Special Issue entitled Politics of Heritage Values.
Member at Large – Tourism seat:
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco, Università Cattolica
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco, cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor at Università Cattolica, researches tourism, local development, and cultural heritage. With fieldwork in Europe and East Africa, he advises on sustainable tourism, innovation, and community empowerment, connecting anthropological insight with policy to address the diverse needs of critical tourism studies stakeholders.
Student Member at Large:
Jake Dean, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jake W. Dean is a PhD student and Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, as well as a Graduate Affiliate in the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He uses ethnographic methods and close reading to study the political ecology of marine conservation, tourism, and development in North America. His dissertation research on the human-animal entanglements between ecotourists, fishers, conservationists, and gray whales along their migratory path from Alaska to Baja California Sur.