David Harrison (Edited By) is a sociologist/anthropologist of development and has spent two decades teaching sociology at Sussex University in the UK and later taught for nine years at the University of the South Pacific and for ten years at London Metropolitan University, before going to Middlesex University in 2014. His basic approach to development issues emerged in his single-authored text The Sociology of Modernization and Development (1988), and he went on to edit numerous books on tourism, including Tourism and the Less Developed Countries (1992), Tourism and the Less Developed World (2001) and Pacific Island Tourism (2003), and co-editor of many others, including The Politics of World Heritage (with Michael Hitchcock (2005), and Tourism in Pacific Islands (with Stephen Pratt) (2015). He has also written numerous papers in refereed journals and chapters in books on tourism and development. A Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, David imbued the sociological perspective when an undergraduate and since then has been fascinated by social behaviour in different societies. Since the late 1980s, his key research interests have been the global role of tourism as a development tool, with particular reference to tourism's economic, social and cultural impacts. He has carried out research in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, South-east Asia and the South Pacific. Richard Sharpley (Edited By) is Professor of Tourism and Development at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. He has previously held positions at a number of other institutions, including the University of Northumbria (Reader in Tourism) and the University of Lincoln, where he was professor of Tourism and Head of Department, Tourism and Recreation Management. He is co-editor of the journal Tourism Planning & Development, a resource editor for Annals of Tourism Research and a member of the editorial boards of a number of other tourism journals. His principal research interests are within the fields of tourism and development, island tourism, rural tourism and the sociology of tourism and his books include Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues (2002, with David Telfer) Tourism and Development in the Developing World (2008, with David Telfer), Tourism, Tourists and Society, 4th Edition (2008); The Darker Side of Travel; The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism (2009, with Philip Stone); Tourism, Development and Environment: Beyond Sustainability (2009); and Tourist Experience: Contemporary Perspectives (2011, with Philip Stone). A further collection on tourist experiences, The Contemporary Tourist Experience: Concepts & Consequences, was published in 2012, and a second edition of Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues, was published in 2015.
