research profile
Dr Irena Ateljevic
Date of Birth: 21 June 1965
Citizenship: Dual: New Zealand and Croatia (but I prefer ‘citizen of the world’)
Degree: PhD (Human Geography, at University of Auckland, New Zealand), MSc (Marketing and Economics at the University of Zagreb, Croatia)
Current Work Address: Socio-Spatial Analysis
Environmental Science
Wageningen University
P.O Box 47
6700 AA Wageningen
The Netherlands
Mobile: 0031-6-48421114
Email:
Dr Irena Ateljevic has 16 years of academic and project management experience as an University professor and international researcher on the cultural politics of sustainable development, specialised in socio-cultural aspects of communities and gender. She conducted numerous projects in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, China and Croatia on issue of economic and social development and gender empowerment in peripheral regions of the world, particularly in the context of tourism development. Through her numerous international projects she supervised research teams and conducted numerous workshops which were focused on the processes of empowerment and capacity building of marginalized and impoverished groups in developing countries of Asia and South Pacific.
She originally comes from Croatia but lived in New Zealand for 12 years, between 1993 and 2005, where she also received her doctoral degree in human geography in 1998 at the University of Auckland. In her doctorate she focused on the political processes of (neo)colonization of New Zealand and how it has affected socio-economic development of indigenous Maori people. She has recently moved (in 2005) from New Zealand to the Netherlands, to take a new University position within the Socio-Spatial Analysis Group at Wageningen University where she teaches on the International Environmental Science Masters programme. With her move to Europe, the geographic focus of her empirical research has moved from Asia and Pacific to the regions of the South-Eastern Europe (particularly to her origin country of Croatia). She taught at the various Universities worldwide and was invited for a keynote speaker at the numerous international conferences. She supervised around 20 Masters and PhD students and taught a whole range of subjects focused on the philosophies of producing knowledge, research methodologies, women empowerment, environmental education, global political economy, rural sustainable development, social change and sustainable tourism.
She has published around 60 international scientific journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and consultancy reports
. She is also a co-founder of the Gender Researchers and Critical Tourism Studies Network which organized three international conferences in Croatia in 2005 (Dubrovnik); 2007 (Split) and Zadar (2009). This engagement has led her to the most recent research interest in analyzing the political implications and powers surrounding the production of academic knowledge. Inspired by the bell hooks ideas of love ethics and critical pedagogy Irena is passionate in challenging the neoliberal approaches to our education and actively works on creating and connecting academies of hope round the globe.
She has ‘translated’ her academic work into the personal and social dedication to the action research and social activism focused on human development potential and women empowerment. One of her latest projects is the creation of e-global community of conscious women which aims to join women from diverse cultures, diverse sensibilities, and needs in a network where we may deposit our experiences as women, as business-women, politicians, etc,...so as to reveal and go developing a way of expression and action that supports the profound global social transformation that is necessary for the sustainable future of our planet (http://consciouswomencommunity.wikispaces.com/). She has recently been appointed to the newly formed UNWTO task force on ‘Women empowerment in tourism’ which has been established in support of the achievement of the UN Millenium Development Goals. The task force (14 international members) consist of representatives of international bodies, education and government high officials and it will be responsible to setting up research agendas on the global scale and to highlight the need for creating appropriate policy frameworks to promote women’s empowerment and protect women’s rights in the context of tourism development.
SELECTED PROJECTS
2008 – ongoing. Global Community of Conscious Women. This project aims to create the global visibility of women dedicated to projects which help the emerging turn in human consciousness towards a new paradigm shift of the partnership between men and women, between different races and different cultures. The project has been elicited by the current context of patriarchical climax which require sensitization of women about their critical role to provide hope, transformation and healing for ourselves, each other, and our planet. In order to do so, this community project seeks to set the foundations for visualizing and overcoming the barriers of the mind-set that are preventing women from developing her full potential, her empowerment and her capacity to communicate her vision and to apply her power of social transformation.
2007-2010: Sustainable Island and Coastal Development in the Sibenik-Knin region: Awareness raising, capacity building and multistakeholder planning for sustainable development and social transformation in Croatia
Civil society organizations, as well as regional and local authorities in the Sibenik-Knin county of Croatia lack the capacity, tools, experience and vision to protect the environment and successfully push for sustainable development in the coastal and island area’s where a constant increase of the tourism sector threatens the environment. The project aims at opening up the way and building the capacity of all relevant stakeholders for sustainable development in the coastal and island areas of Croatia, with the particular focus on gender empowerment.
Project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MATRA programme, (500,000 euros).
2001-2002: Gender Issues in South-Eastern Europe: A case study of Croatia. The project explores the gender relations and issues of power in the context of post-war environment, the economy in transition and tourism entrepreneurship. Funded by local government of Sibensko-Kninska Zupanija, Croatia (12,000 euros).
2000-2002. Challenges of Change in the Central Massif (the Mekong area)
This research project was part of the wider Programme of Research Cooperation between Yunnan University, Kunming, China and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. This programme continues to explore the challenge of change in the Central Massif within new contexts of Chinese modernity and international political economy. A wide range of academics from Departments of Anthropology, Geography, Tourism and Asian Studies have been involved in this programme of research cooperation. I was focused on economic development of tourism and the ways ethnic minority groups are involved in tourism production. The project was funded by Asia 2000 Foundation; (NZ$148,000).