Mobility and knowledge capital

Forward thinking universities, like Macerata, will retain an important stake as custodians of information and knowledge capital for a long time yet

di Richard Robinson*

As a tourism academic I have an intimate research relationship with mobility. My PhD in the area of tourism and hospitality workforce issues, examined the mobility of chefs, both between employers and ultimately out of the occupation. The food tourism research that took me away from Australia’s sweltering summer to Macerata this mild European winter (so far!), is predicated on the ability of a relatively wealthy global minority to be mobile and to pursue their everyday passion for gastronomy on their travels. Indeed, mobility is one of the most important theoretical approaches in tourism, and as John Urry, the preeminent sociologist reminds us, mobility accounts for not just the movement of people but also of objects, images, information and waste.  I do not want to dwell on the last of these, waste, but instead on information. Information and knowledge have always been the unique ‘capital’ of universities, but this is no longer so. Corporations and communities, governments and individuals, have also become partners in the generation and guardianship of knowledge and information - and technology has facilitated both its security (immobility) and sharing (mobility).

But what the privilege of working in the university sector affordsresearchers like me is not just to use technology to assist in the generation and dissemination of information but also to be physically mobile. The old adage is that ‘travel broadens the mind’. I count myself as extremely fortunate, in my short academic career, to have been able to attend conferences, deliver workshops and be in residence at universities throughout south-east Asia and the Pacific, the middle-east, north America, Scandinavia, Britain, northern and central Europe and the Mediterranean - and now be among a group of four inaugural Matteo Ricci visiting fellows to the University of Macerata. Although I am only halfway into my fellowship I would like to share a few thoughts about the wide-ranging benefits that the mobility facilitated by this fellowship has delivered. Firstly in the generation of information I have worked with my very talented and passionate ‘buddy’, Dr Alessio Cavicchi, on a program of food and gastronomy related-research. Our collaboration started indirectly a couple years ago when we were both involved in a Swedish government-funded food tourism project, which brought together researchers from Sweden, Canada, Australia, Norway, the UK, Germany and Italy! We are now sharing ideas and information on an EU-funded Urbact project, which again facilitated mobility between city stakeholders from five European cities to effect the gastronomic branding of Marche region’s Fermo. We have already disseminated some ideas at a tourism consumer behaviour conference in Brunico, which attracted the attention of other international scholars who promise to mature into future collaborators.The exchange of experiences, the injection of novel ideas, theregeneration of our respective strengths - have all been possible due to the mobility of academics.

But I have also had the privilege of teaching into the tourism, culture and heritagegraduate program, interestingly enough to a class largely comprised of Erasmus students who moved to Macerata from around Europe.I was able to expose them to the andragogy of problem based learning theory, which I use with success at my home institution, the University of Queensland. I sense the andragogy has also influenced the thinking of other academics that shared learning spaces with me at Macerata. My learning and teaching praxis has improved immeasurably because I have been afforded the opportunity to work with students from different cultural backgrounds. To put the ‘mobility’ icing on the cake the students I worked with have been working ‘real world’ problems for stakeholders involved in the Fermo city-branding project. This has closed that exciting loop of research active scholars passing on state-of-art knowledge to students who use these skills to transfer knowledge to industry who in turn inspire and invigorate academics to tackle other pressing social, economic, political and cultural issues in their community.

In the final analysis I personally will profit professionally from my fellowship in Macerata, but will also be enriched by the friendships, collaborations, experiences and cultural opportunities encountered through this mobility. But as the above simple examples abundantly illustrate, the benefits of academic mobility reverberate through many stakeholder groups and will have the sorts of enduring benefits that ensure that forward thinking universities, like Macerata, will retain an important stake as custodians of information and knowledge capital for a long time yet.

*University of Queensland St Lucia (Brisbane) / AUSTRALIA
Visiting scholar at University of Macerata / academic year 2014-2015 with the Project VISITING SCHOLAR 2013 “COLLEGIO MATTEO RICCI”