Full circle: Traversing cultural landscapes

About Professor Anna Carr's research

Anna (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāruahine) is Head of the Department of Tourism at the Otago Business School. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching explore tourism and recreation management in protected areas, ecotourism, cultural landscapes, and Indigenous/community values for tourism development.

She focusses on how visitors' and locals' recreation, conservation or landscapes experiences can be informed by Indigenous and community narratives or histories around environment and place including Indigenous communities own experiences of tourism and recreation.

Most recently, she has contributed to an RSNZ Marsden-funded project investigating visitors perceptions of invasive species (including the various tools and strategies around managing Invasive species). Her work has informed both academic publications and policy, with career highlights including co-authoring the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (WINTA) Indigenous research protocol and supervising 29 PhD and 27 Master’s candidates. She is the founding co-director of the Centre for Recreation Research (established 2008).

Before academia, Anna was owner-operator of two adventure tourism businesses. She worked in various New Zealand national parks for the Departments of Conservation and Lands and Survey. From 2014–2020, she held a government Ministerial appointment to the Otago Conservation Board and a member of the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council National Research Committee (2007–16)

She has been a visiting or co-researcher with numerous international projects and universities. She was a founding member of the journal Tourism in Marine Environments (2006-2026) and serves on editorial boards of the Journal of Ecotourism, Annals of Leisure Research, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism and most recently on the inaugural board of the International Journal of Indigenous Business.

This lecture will be followed with light refreshments, tea, coffee and juice.

Livestream information

This event will be livestreamed from 5:25pm, Tuesday, 17 November 2026.

Livestream Professor Anna Carr's IPL