Keynote speakers
Dr Ian Yeoman
Dr Ian Yeoman is an Associate Professor at Victoria University of Wellington who has a passion for the study of the future of tourism and hospitality and believes that everything on Star Trek will come true.
Ian has a PhD from Edinburgh Napier University and is studying towards a higher doctorate at Sheffield Hallam University based upon the idea of explanation or not and truth or not when constructing scenarios.
Ian is editor of the Journal of Revenue & Pricing Management co-editor of the Journal of Tourism Futures and, author and co-editor of 17 books including the 'Future of Food Tourism', '2050: Tomorrows Tourism'; 'Tomorrows Tourist; The Future of Events and Festivals and a large collection of papers.
Ian holds Visiting Professor posts at Ulster University and the European Tourism Futures Institute.
He lives on the Kapiti coast with his family and is New Zealand's largest importer of Sunderland AFC football memorabilia."
Professor Peter Walker
Peter Walker is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Belfast School of Architecture.
Before joining Ulster University he taught part time at Newcastle University alongside being a director of Devereux Architects, one of the largest healthcare architects in the UK.
Prior to that he lived in London where he was a director of Conran Design Group a company established and led by leading British designer Sir Terence Conran.
During this time he worked on a number of hotel, restaurant and arts projects including work at the Royal Festival Hall, Bibendum Restaurant and Gatwick North Terminal.
Peter has been an adviser to the Egyptian Government on sustainable design, a consultant architect to the North East England Development Corporation, an adviser to Northumberland County Council on the regeneration of five towns in the former Northumberland coalfields, and has been an expert witness on over forty cases of architectural professional negligence.
He is presently an independent advisor to the Architects Registration Board – the UK regulator for architecture, on the Councils of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects and on the council of SCHOSA – the Standing Conference of Heads of Schools of Architecture.
His teaching and research interest is in the management of architecture and the process of architectural design and in British Architecture in the 50s and 60s.
Dr Francesca Zampollo
Francesca is a Food Design researcher and consultant.
Francesca has a PhD in Design Theory applied to Food Design and is an award winning Food Designer. She is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Food Design published by Intellect.
In 2009 Francesca founded the International Food Design Society, and since then organized the First International Symposium on Food Experience Design (London, November 2010), the International Conference on Designing Food and Designing for Food (London, June 2012) which was the first academic conference on Food Design, and the Second International Conference on Food Design (New York, November 2015).
Francesca is currently working full time on her project In Search of Meaningful Food; she is travelling the world to collect stories of people's most meaningful food, in an attempt to capture the beautiful nature of meaningful food and the deep relationship we have with it.