Michael is currently Professor in Marketing in the Department of Management, joining the department at the start of 2007. He is also currently Docent in the Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland; Visiting Professor in the Business School, Linneaus University, Kalmar, Sweden; and a Visiting Professor at the Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam, UK. He is also a frequent visitor to the Department of Social and Economic Geography, Umeå University (from which he received an honorary doctorate in 2008) and the School of Service Management at Lund Helsingborg campus, both in Sweden. He has also previously held positions at the University of Otago, Victoria University of Wellington, Massey University, University of Canberra and the University of New England. He has also previously been an Honorary Professor in the Department of Marketing, Stirling University, Scotland. His doctorate is in geography from the University of Western Australia, from which he also received an honours degree in politics. His masters is from the faculty of environmental studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada, in geography/resource management.Michael has longstanding interests in tourism and voluntary temporary mobility, regional development, environmental history, and sustainability with current research dealing with such issues as place branding and marketing (including Santa Claus), power and policy making in tourism, steady-state and ecological economic perspectives on destinations and places, servicescapes, economic geography and tourism mobility, conservation and environmental and climate change, event impacts, international studies, and the use of tourism as an economic development and conservation mechanism. More recently he has been undertaking research on wine and food marketing and gastronomy, which has required strenuous research in the field, this is particularly focused on development of local economies, network relationships and social capital, food miles, biosecurity, and farmers markets. He is the author or editor of over 55 books as well as author of over 350 journal articles and book chapters and is active in a number of international research associations such as ATLAS and the IGU Tourism Commission.