Renowned Dark Tourist Scholar Philip Stone recently paid a virtual visit to Colette Copeland's Critical Writing Seminar in cultural criticism. Through tele-conference technology, Stone engaged in an informal question and answer session with Colette's students, who had read Stone's and (co-editor Richard Sharpley's) book The Darker Side of Travel for their coursework. Stone is Editor of The Dark Tourism Forum and Director of the soon to be launched International Institute for Dark Tourism Research (IiDTR), and is located at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), United Kingdom. Holding a Doctorate in Thanatology - society's reactions to and perceptions of mortality, Stone's work examines the consumption of dark tourism - that is, travel to sites of death, disaster or the seemingly macabre - and its fundamental interrelationship with the thanatological condition of society. A Visiting Tutor at The University of Cambridge, Stone also acts as a Media Consultant on dark tourism for such clients as BBC TV and radio, History Television, The New York Times, The New Scientist, and The Guardian. Philip has published extensively in the area of dark tourism, and with Professor Richard Sharpley, he is co-author/editor of The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism (Channel View, 2009) and Tourist Experience: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2011).
For more about Stone, visit http://works.bepress.com/philip_stone/