Who’s Who

Maria Gravari-Barbas

Scientific Conference Board & Speaker

Maria Gravari-Barbas has a degree in Architecture and Urban Design (University of Athens, 1985) and a PhD in Geography and Planning (Paris 4 – Sorbonne, 1991). She was Fellow at the Urban Program of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA (1990).

She is director of EIREST (Equipe Interdisciplinaire de REcherches Sur le Tourisme), a multidisciplinary research team dedicated to tourism studies, with main focus cultural heritage, development, and urban-tourism evolutions.

From 2008 to 2017 she was director of IREST ((Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes Supérieures du Tourisme), the Institute for Research and High Studies on Tourism of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Since 2009 she is director of the UNESCO Chair and the coordinator of the UNITWIN network “Tourism, Culture, Development”, comprising 30 top level universities from all around the world – EACH/USP included, as one of the members in Brazil, along with Universidade Federal de Pelotas and Universidade Regional de Joinville.

She is an invited professor at several universities in Europe, the United States and Latin America. She is the author of several books and papers related to tourism, culture and heritage.

Since 2017 she is Vice-Provost for International Relations in Université de Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne.