Richard is a Professor and Vice Chancellor Fellow at Northumbria University in the Newcastle Business School, in the UK. Prior to this Richard spent 19 years with The University of Queensland, after an extended career as a chef, predominantly managing foodservice operations in the private club, boutique hotel and heritage facilities sectors. He has completed numerous consultancy and research contracts and grants for federal and State government departments, international agencies, peak industry associations, industry and not-for-profits. He has received university, national and international awards for teaching and research and in competitive funding and in prize monies has to date shared in the awarding of over £2/$4 million.
Specialising in service work and employment, his projects have investigated the tourism, hospitality, leisure, transport, retail and welfare/social service sector contexts in the formal, gig and grey economies. His research has been funded by fellowships, competitive research grants, corporations, not-for-profits, industry peak bodies, government, and international agencies – and explores themes such as fair, safe and sustainable work, mental health and wellbeing, careers and vocations, and skills, training and development.
Richard has taught a suite of hospitality and tourism management, professional development and dissertation classes and supervised several higher degree research students to completion, endeavours supported by an active program of scholarship in teaching and learning involving the design, delivery, and evaluation of education programs. He has conducted over a dozen invited program reviews nationally and internationally. He has been recognised as one of the top four ‘most frequently cited authors in hospitality HRM research’ (Pelit & Katircioglu, 2022) and in 2020 a Stanford University database ranked him in the top 2% of cited authors in his field.
Richard’s work has been published in leading academic field-specific journals including; Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management; leading disciplinary titles such as Human Relations, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, The Sociological Review and Journal of Leisure Research; a co-authored monograph, four co-edited books, edited book chapters, international conference proceedings, practitioner periodicals and contracted technical and government reports. He is regularly called upon by media for expert comment. He is co-editor of the Q2 social sciences journal Hospitality & Society, a co-ordinating editor for International Journal of Hospitality Management and serves on the editorial and/or advisory boards of Tourism Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management – and several others.