Meet FRONT postdoctoral researcher Bailey Ashton Adie: “I am interested in how communities adapt to "their" place changing, as a result of natural hazards, climate change or tourism”

Bailey Ashton Adie’s research spans World Heritage and heritage tourism, community resilience, community-based tourism, natural hazards and tourism, second homes, and dark tourism (travel to sites associated with a history of death and human suffering).

“While I have always researched whatever piques my interest, I normally take bottom-up and human-centred approaches to my research.”

Adie is best known for her work on World Heritage and tourism and her work on second homes and natural hazards. Her approach to World Heritage and tourism challenges dominant thinking about how World Heritage works on a systemic and local level. Meanwhile her research on second home communities examines how people’s place attachment impacts on adaptation, mitigation, and community resilience.

“Given the current polycrisis, tourism is having a bit of an existential crisis - and has been for years. Personally, I’m really interested in how communities feel about ‘their’ place changing.”

Adie is particularly interested in local perspectives on change—not only visible shifts in landscapes, but also changes in tangible and intangible heritage, and what these shifts mean for a community’s ability to adapt over time.

Resilience is the ability to respond to a sudden or long-term shock on a personal, community, regional, or national level

Within FRONT, Adie builds on earlier work examining resilience in second-home contexts, extending that foundation to better understand the intersections of people and place in relation to heritage and landscape. This helps connect lived experience with wider processes—from climate-related disruptions to long-term social and economic transformation.

Defining resilience, Adie emphasizes that it applies at multiple levels. She sees resilience as the ability to respond to a sudden or long-term shock, either at a personal, community, regional, or national level - and ideally all of these. To explain the essence of resilience in a less academic way, she gives an example that might put a smile on one’s face and get a catchy beat stuck in one’s head:

“The easiest way to explain resilience is probably to quote that song by Chumbawumba from the late '90s - "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You ain't never gonna keep me down".

Right now, Adie is developing several streams of research tied to community resilience, including a recently submitted ERC Consolidator bid. She is also currently seeking funding for the project that she developed and leads that is focused on intangible cultural heritage and community resilience, with partners in Sweden, Italy, Poland and New Zealand.

Adie´s research will soon appear in book form as well: she has forthcoming book chapters addressing second homes and community resilience. Also, she and her colleague, Prof. Akbar Keshodkar (Moravian University, USA), have just signed a contract with Routledge for an edited book, titled The Politics of World Heritage Tourism: Contesting and Negotiating Power, Memory, and Belonging in the 21st Century.

Research shaped by a curiosity-driven approach that transcends disciplinary boundaries

Adie’s route into her field was shaped by a long-standing enjoyment of learning and a curiosity-driven approach to research—less about following a single track and more about building the knowledge needed to understand questions that feel meaningful, regardless of disciplinary boundaries. Therefore, FRONT, being a multidisciplinary programme at its core, is an ideal fit for her work.

One memorable professional highlight has been taking on the role of co-Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of Heritage Tourism—the same journal where Adie published her first paper. Beyond titles and milestones, Adie also values how research can open doors to international collaboration and fieldwork in places that once felt far away:

“I'm just so surprised still that my job involves meeting people from all over the world and doing fieldwork in places that my childhood self in the rural US would never have thought we would ever see.”

Adie’s best ideas often arrive away from the desk—when she’s walking outside or working in the garden: “Generally, my best ideas happen when I don’t have a pen around! I think better when I’m moving.”

Outside work, Adie builds her personal resilience through a mix of favourite everyday activities, including gardening, reading, quiet walks in nature, video games and cooking.

Selected publications:

• Bailey Ashton Adie, C. Michael Hall: Grieving the Arctic: From tourism to trauma
• Alix Varnajot, Bailey Ashton Adie: Second Homes and Climate Change