Professor Jillian Rickly

BA (Indiana University), BA (Indiana University), MA (Indiana University), PhD (Indiana University)

Department: Marketing, Tourism and Analytics
E-mail: Jillian.Rickly@nottingham.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 115 8466493
Location: B74 (North Building, Jubilee Campus)

Jillian Rickly (PhD, FHEA) is Professor of Tourism with a background in geography and nearly two decades of experience with interdisciplinary social science research and pedagogy. She is globally recognized for her work on tourist experience, tourism geographies, lifestyle mobilities, and accessible tourism.

Since joining the Nottingham University Business School in 2014, Jillian has focused her research activities in two main areas:
(1) Authenticity/alienation in tourism motivation and experience. She has spent much of her career working in this area, with her greatest scholarly contributions coming from her theorization of the role of authenticity and alienation in tourist motivation and experience across numerous contexts (heritage, dark, nature, adventure, smart). She serves as the Curator for the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Authenticity, which is a leading archive on the topic.
(2) Accessible tourism and more-than-human accessibility. In recent years, she has developed a new research agenda related to disability, accessibility and travel behaviour. Much of this work has focused on people with disabilities who have assistance dogs and examines the role of this human-animal relationship in travel behaviour across the transport, travel and tourism sectors. This has inspired collaborations with Guide Dogs for the Blind and Assistance Dogs UK. New projects now stretch into various niches of accessible tourism, including disability representation in adventure tourism, the accessibility of accessibility information by service providers, and conceptualizing the potential of occupational therapy to the field. She is the co-guest editor of the "Accessible Tourism Geographies" (2025) special issue in Tourism Geographies and co-editor of the Handbook of Accessible Tourism (2025, De Gruyter).

Jillian serves as:
- Head of Department for Marketing, Tourism and Analytics
- Theme Lead (Accessibility and Inclusivity) for the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Advanced Research Centre
- Co-Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Tourism Research (2026-present)
- Series Editor of De Gruyter Studies in Tourism (2017-2025)
- Co-editor of Tourism Geographies Collection on Accessible Tourism (2024-2026)
- Curator of Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Authenticity (2022-present)


Areas of Expertise
Tourist experience; Tourism motivation; Tourism mobilities and behaviour; Authenticity; Alienation; Accessible tourism; More-than-human accessibility; More-than-human theories; Qualitative methodologies