Ruth Weiand

 

Dissertation Project

“Small and fine mountaineering villages” – Policy of Sustainability in Alpine tourism

The Austrian Alpine Association created the brand Mountaineering Villages in an attempt to protect and promote sustainable development of the entire Alps. This includes regional development and tourism. This dissertation project claims that this brand is creating a new way of travelling that must be negotiated and made plausible for the local community as well as for potential guests. Policies ofsustainability are designed by combining specific forms of knowledge and creating preformed definitions. The dissertation project follows the policy of the mountaineering villages, looks at how the idea of sustainable  development can be promoted as a tourism brand, and how this can be defined in concrete terms. It also investigates how new media is embedded in the new forms of travel. The study focuses on three villages: Ramsau in Germany, Hüttschlag in Austria, and Jezersko in Slovenia.

CV

Since October 2018, Ruth Weiand has been a PhD candidate and postgraduate research fellow at the graduate research group “New Travel – New Media”. In 2018, she undertook field research in Grimsby, England, and interned at the North East Lincolnshire Council in England. Between 2015 and 2018, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology. Ruth Weiand completed her master’s degree in 2018, as well as her bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology and Economics at the University of Freiburg in 2015.

Publications

  • Weiand, Ruth (2021): Alpinismus, Kontinuität und imaginierter Intergenerationendiskurs im nachhaltigen Alpentourismus – das Beispiel „Bergsteigerdörfer“. In: Medien & Altern. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis, 18: 6475.
  • Weiand, Ruth (2020): Die gemachten Gäste. Die Bergsteigerdörfer und ihr Bild von den Reisenden. In: Česky lid 107, 4: 493510.
  • Weiand, Ruth (2017): “TEEtand Extravanganz”. Das Potenzial interdisziplinärerer Partnerschaften. In 50 Jahre Institut für Volkskunde in Freiburg – ein Erinnerungsalbum. Ed. by Griay/Tauschek/Zinn-Thomas (Ed.): Maximilianstr. 15.

Papers

  • University of Innsbruck (09.11.2019): Wertschöpfung durch Wertschätzung? Lecture at the 14th dgv doctoral conference.
  • International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, Santiago de Compostella (16.04.2019): The Green Self – Imageries, Conceptions and the Performance of Sustainable Tourism in a Digital World. Lecture at the 14th SIEF-Congress Track Changes: Reflecting on a Transforming World.
  • University of Jena (02.06.2017): ’So long, and thanks for all the fish’“ Post-Brexit-England als alltägliche Utopie.Lecture at the dgv student conference.
  • University of Freiburg (26.05.2017): Doing what? Doing Europe? Möglichkeiten der Kulturanthropologie zwischen Wissenschaft und Aktivismus. Workshop leadership at the dgv student conference.
  • University of Freiburg (10.05.2013): Architektur, Kultur und Konfrontation – ‚Das Hotel Paradiso del Cevedale‘. Workshop leadership at the dgv student conference.

Teaching

  • Bachelor seminar at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology: Travel to the ends of the world (summer term 2020)
  • Led the accompanying tutorial for the lecture “Methods of Qualitative Social Research” at the University of Freiburg (summer terms 2016 and 2017).