Prof.dr. Stijn Reijnders has received the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant for his research on film related tourism. With this grant of more than 1,9 M. euro Reijnders can expand his team and work on a global level the next five years.
Reijnders, professor in Cultural Heritage at Erasmus University Rotterdam, looks at the growing phenomenon of people traveling to places they know from popular films or tv series. This sometimes has huge financial and ecological effects. One estimates for example that the number of tourist visiting New Zealand has doubled by the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Reijnders and his team want to make a fundamental contribution to a growing but dispersed research area with their project ‘Worlds of Imagination’. They will do this by studying film related tourism in a comparative manners and by using new experimental methods from both the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Reijnders project is hosted by the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC). Tuesday February the 2nd Stijn Reijnders will be broadcasted in a special IFFR-edition of Studio Erasmus.