Dark Tourism: How do we study dark tourism?

Who studies dark tourism?

Dark tourism was once only studied by academics in tourism or heritage studies. Now, students and researchers from across disciplines explore research questions related to dark tourism (Price, 2017).

Some of the most current research in dark tourism has emerged from the fields of anthropology, architecture, criminology, cultural studies, education, ethics, geography, performance studies, psychology, and sociology, just to name a few (Price, 2017).

What do dark tourism researchers want to find out?

Research questions in dark tourism are as diverse as the researchers who study the phenomenon. Some people study the political nature of tourist experiences, analyze tourist motivations, or explore the influences of different stakeholders (Light, 2017).

Dark tourism is an interdisciplinary topic, and researchers approach the study of it from their own scholarly viewpoints. Some examples of current research questions in dark tourism include:

• How do cultural and political factors influence memorial design?
• How does tourism affect children or people who live near dark tourism destinations?
• How do ghost and prison tours perpetuate narratives of power and control?  (Price, 2017)

According to Philip R. Stone, Executive Director for the Institute for Dark Tourism research at the University of Central Lancashire, dark tourism scholarship should "shine a critical light on how societies deal with and present their dead, and in doing so, offer multidisciplinary discourse on the darker side of travel" (Stone, 2013, p. 315).

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