Ph.D. researcher/tutor at the University of Leuven, Division of Geography

Tourism has been proposed as a local development tool for territories that have suffered from conflict and that want to rebuild their livelihoods, shattered by a violent past. Certainly, post-conflict areas offer a unique setting to analyse the opportunities tourism has to offer for development and conflict transformation initiatives, but also to identify and acknowledge the existing limitations in such fragile environments. Tourism, as leverage for local development and reconciliation in post-conflict destinations, is an emerging and challenging field given the complexities it presents and the implications for future tourism policy. Taking into account the existence of this research gap, the present thesis proposes to take a closer look at the link between conflict and tourism development and the opportunities and challenges that tourism presents for conflict transformation to a more peaceful reality. This research will be framed within the context of a country that has recently become a post-conflict area: Colombia. The general aim is to contribute to the debate on post-conflict tourism, specifically by addressing the bidirectional relationship between tourism and conflict through empirical research. Hence, this research will examine the impact of tourism in the light of conflict transformation and behavioural theories to set up a stronger theoretical and methodological framework. The following research questions are proposed, considering that they could be further developed and specified later on: • How and to what extent tourism can be used as a mechanism to rebuild the socio-economic foundations and supporting local development of a post-conflict territory? • How and to what extent a violent past influences the touristic product of a post-conflict territory? • How and to what extent tourism can help in the reconstruction of the social fabric and foster reconciliation in a post-conflict territory? • How tourism can contribute to managing the conflict heritage? Due to the exploratory nature of the research and its connection with human behaviour, priority will be given to qualitative research methods, where necessary complemented by quantitative techniques. Data collection will come from secondary and primary sources. Research methods include structured and semi-structured interviews, participatory observation and surveys.