Greg Richards

Greg Richards is Professor of Placemaking and Events at Breda University and Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands. He has worked on projects for numerous national governments, national tourism organisations and municipalities, and he has extensive experience in tourism and leisure research and education. His recent books include the SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies, Reinventing the Local in Tourism, Small Cities with Big Dreams: Creative Placemaking and Branding Strategies and Rethinking Cultural Tourism.

He has been involved in the development and evaluation of a number of major event-led cultural regeneration programmes, including the European Capitals of Culture and the Hieronymus Bosch 500 anniversary programme. He has completed several major research projects on the relationship between culture and tourism, including reports for the OECD on the Impact of Culture on Tourism (2009) and Tourism and the Creative Economy (2014). He has also collaborated with the UNWTO on the report on Tourism and Culture Synergies (2108), and he is now involved in the EU CROCUS project on cultural and creative tourism development in rural and remote areas of Europe.