Deadline for submission: August 3, 2026

Online workshop – Fall 2026

In-person conference, Berlin – Spring 2027

In recent years, tourism numbers worldwide have expanded dramatically, often exceeding the capacity of places and communities. In response, residents have protested, debate has intensified, and both public authorities and the tourism industry have begun to rethink policies, strategies, and forms of destination management. Within the past decade, examinations of contemporary “overtourism” and “anti-tourism” have become pervasive in tourism studies, urban studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, cultural studies, and political science. 

Yet, for as long as people have traveled to other places, there have been people who regarded them with irritation, resentment, or open hostility. From antiquity onward, historical sources reveal frustration with travelers and with the social, spatial, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts associated with their presence.

However, although this anti-touristic sentiment is nothing new, historical scholarship has paid surprisingly little attention to its forms, meanings, and consequences. Histories of tourism often describe its negative impacts and the widespread derision it provoked, yet rarely investigate who objected to tourism, how opposition was organized, and what lasting effects it produced. We thus aim to foreground anti-tourism in the historical record, as a phenomenon in its own right, but also in relation to other themes, such as social movements, popular mobilization, environmental conflicts, political change, colonialism, and decolonization. A historical perspective may also shed light on present-day conflicts around tourism, revealing longer trajectories, recurring patterns, and overlooked causes that can help us better understand contemporary challenges.

The project will be developed collectively through online workshops in autumn 2026, followed by an in-person conference in 2027 bringing together a smaller group of participants. Following the conference, selected contributors will be invited to develop their work for an edited volume.

We are looking for scholars already working on this topic, as well as those who may have encountered anti-touristic attitudes, conflicts, or forms of resistance in their research without treating them as a primary object of investigation. We invite contributors to revisit their historical materials, cases, and contexts to ask what kinds of anti-touristic critique or action may be present, but previously unexamined. 

Wide-ranging terms such as “anti-tourism” invite academic debate and conceptual distinction. At this stage, we understand anti-tourism broadly as a spectrum of attitudes, critiques, practices, and forms of mobilization directed against tourists, tourism development, or the perceived effects of tourism. Our interest goes beyond sentiment alone. We are especially interested in how anti-touristic ideas and emotions became socially or politically significant: how they circulated, how they were expressed, how they shaped public debate, and how they may have led to protest, policy change, regulation, exclusion, or other forms of collective action.

We also seek to investigate the historiography of anti-tourism, examining where and how anti-tourism shows up in the historical record, the different forms in which it has been written about, and why it is seemingly so absent from scholarly attention. We therefore welcome contributions that foreground sources, archives, and methods, including methodological reflections on how historical anti-tourism can be identified, interpreted, and compared.

In terms of scope, we welcome contributions from any geographical setting and any period before c. 2000. This includes examinations of travel practices prior to the advent of modern tourism, such as pilgrimage, merchant and elite travel, seasonal retreats, etc. 

Please submit an abstract in English (c. 500 – 750 words in pdf format) detailing the topic/theme you would like to explore in an upcoming online workshop (late September 2026) along with a current CV by August 3rd to Dr. Kristin Semmens at ksemmens[at]uvic[dot]ca and Dr. Emily Bereskin at emily.bereskin[at]metropolitanstudies[dot]de.

Guiding Questions and Lines of Inquiry: 

• Where and when do we see anti-tourism emerge in the historical record? What forms does it take? Who expresses it, and against whom is it directed? What kinds of tourists, tourism practices, or tourism infrastructures become objects of criticism or resentment?
• How can we define anti-tourism as a historical phenomenon? What distinguishes irritation, satire, moral critique, xenophobia, class resentment, environmental concern, and organized resistance? Can we understand anti-tourism as a spectrum, and if so, what would such a spectrum include?
• How did class, race, gender, nationality, religion, or colonial relations shape hostility toward tourists?
• How did anti-tourism intersect with broader struggles over modernization, urbanization, environmental protection, nationalism, or local autonomy?
• When did anti-tourism lead to public debate, protest, violence, regulation, changes in tourism development, spatial restrictions, new policies, or shifts in local identity and place-making?
• Why has this line of inquiry been relatively absent from historical writing and tourism studies? What sources can be used to study historical anti-tourism? How might we read newspapers, travel writing, guidebooks, municipal records, police files, court cases, pamphlets, visual culture, literature, oral histories, planning documents, environmental campaigns, or tourism-industry archives for evidence of anti-touristic sentiment or action?

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Feature image: Graffiti in Barcelona, 2019. By Billie Grace Ward from New York, USA – Tourist Go Home, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89954092