Our Research Projects

A European Dark Skies Tourism project in collaboration with six European partners. The Dark Sky Project aims to empower training bodies and business in remote and rural European tourism to seize a more equitable share of Europe’s future post pandemic tourism opportunities. It will play a key role in rebuilding and refocusing European tourism to be more sustainable, resilient, and future orientated. For more information visit darkskytourism.eu.

We are engaged in a research project focused on creating a Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) curriculum design framework within TUS. This initiative is part of the Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) Funding (2022-2023). Our research aims to influence these departments overarching approach to ESD by identifying the most effective ESD frameworks in current practice;

Department of Civil Engineering and Trades (Faculty of Engineering and Informatics - Athlone),

Department of Built Environment (Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment - Limerick),

Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Faculty of Business and Hospitality - Athlone)

Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Wellness (Faculty of Business and Humanities - Limerick)

​Recent conference presentations;

World Environmental Educational Congress 2024 - Abu Dhabi, UAE (January, 2024)

Institut de Socio-Economie des Entreprises et des Organisations (ISER) - Lyon, France (June, 2024)

European Educational Research Association (EERA) – Cyprus (August, 2024)

EPIC STAYS will develop a new VET offering and upskill European tourism businesses leading to the development of new, alternative tourism accommodation (ATA) in Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy and Slovenia and thereafter across Europe. By 2025, we will upskill 50+ VET educators and 500+ VET learners with knowledge, current facts and best practices regarding ATA and its potential to address the EU accommodation crisis, climate change, changing consumer trends as well as market opportunities.

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This project addresses the lack of green technology curriculum in European culinary and hospitality schools, which primarily focus on gastronomy and hospitality management skills. The project aims to develop digital resources for educators and students in hotel and culinary schools across four partner countries to reduce food waste, develop circular economy skills, and localise food production.

The INSPIRE project, led by Technological University of the Shannon (Ireland) will support the needs of refugee led tourism entrepreneurs. We will identify good practice case studies, barriers to success case studies, and lessons applicable across the partner countries for the EU dealing with the refugee crises caused by the invasion of Ukraine and develop resources to support this population. We aim to support Ukrainian and other refugees with social integration and access to higher education through this innovative project. The project will produce a detailed report conducted from primary and secondary fieldwork in Ireland, Belgium, Croatia, Türkiye, & Ukraine. We will create a good practice user guide for refugee tourism entrepreneurs. This will be supported by course materials, a website and mobile application. A final resource will be the publication of a searchable databank of supports for refugee tourism entrepreneurs, including education and training supports, finance options, networking and business supports. Partners include Businet, KHNU and DVA (Ukraine), DEU (Türkiye), PAR (Croatia) and PXL (Belgium). The project will run Nov 2023 – Nov 2025 and is funded by Erasmus Key Action 2.

We are active research members of the Regional University Network, on Research where we lead the tourism research group. This network includes partner universities from Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Belgium, and Finland. Through the network we engage in co-supervision of PhD research, collaborative funding bids and dissemination of research results. For more information please visit RUN-EU.eu

The RUN-EU PLUS project is an integrated long-term strategy for research and innovation within our European University, funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union’s research and innovation programme. In RUN-EU PLUS we are developing collaborative PHD programmes with partners from Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungrary and Finland.

This project involves identifying the future skills needs of regional food and drink producers based in the Midlands Region of Longford, Laois, Offaly and Westmeath. For further information on the regional strategy visit here.

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