On 21st September 2018, Michael Hitchcock gave a keynote address in Hanoi at the International Symposium entitled ‘Nexus of Migration and Tourism; Creating Social Sustainability’.

Prof Hitchcock by Dr Jaeyeon Choe

The conference was hosted by Vietnam’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development in collaboration with the UK’s Bournemouth University.

Michael’s paper was a collaboration with Professor Ivan Lai at City University, Macau, and it contrasted local reactions to tourism in Macau and Hong Kong. 

Michael’s connection with Southeast Asia goes back to 1980 when he embarked upon a study of the material culture of the Bimanese of Sumbawa island in Indonesia when he was a research student at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford.

Initially funded by his work in the building trade in The Netherlands, he went on to receive an ESRC grant and was sponsored by Udayana University in Bali. He received his doctorate from Oxford University in 1983. 

In the 1990s he began to engage with Vietnam and received two European Commission grants to further research and development while intersecting with Goldsmiths’ Ford Foundation project run by Gerald Lidstone.

After a career in museums and higher education in the UK, Michael went on to IMI Switzerland as a college director before moving to the Macau University of Science and Technology as a Dean and member of the Senior Executive.

He continues to publish on Indonesia and Vietnam, and has written many collaborative papers on China and Taiwan.

Michael is Professor in Cultural Policy an Tourism in ICCE at Goldsmiths, University of London.

by Dr Jaeyeon Choe