Greetings my familiar strangers,
Just an update to feed your fancy. I have noticed that this blog has been getting more attention than usual and felt a bit ashamed for not having posted much for the past… well… year?
That’s what you get when you try to read an academic blog of an overworked PhD student.
The good news is that my MA thesis on Intimate Tourism is currently being published in French (Intimate Tourism: Enquete dans un reseau d’hospitalite. Limoges: Solilange, 2008). The book will be available in January. More details for those french speaking Intimate Tourists soon.
As for the original thesis, or for more details on what Intimate Tourism is all about, please feel free to email me for a copy here: p.bialski [at] lancs.ac.uk
For more on my work, please check my Lancaster site here: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/pgrprofiles/262/
Intimate Tourism 
Hello Paula,
My name is Emilie and I’m currently completing a dissertation on the implication of travellers’comunities that aggregate around consensual practices for destination stakeholders and more particularly in terms of destination branding. I did 2 years ago an exploratory work on the Interrailers, but this time i also focus on the Couchsurfers (mainly because of the availibility of secondary data online, and also because i’m a couchsurfer myself).
My work is only an applied research, and I relate my findings to industry stakes; nevertheless I apply some ethnographical mehtods and my literature review is based on sociology mainly.
Therefore I would be interested in reading some parts of your work, and especially the ones cited at the end of this message.
Can you please indicate me how I can have an access to these papers?
I know there will be soon a French publication but i won’t be in France by the time it’ll be in bookstores…
Thank you very much in advance for your help!
Regards,
Emilie
# Intimate Tourism: Changing the relationship between the tourist and the other through the online hospitality network. The 6th International Symposium on Aspects of Tourism: “Gazing, Glancing, Glimpsing: Tourists and Tourism in a Visual World. Eastbourne, England. June, 2007.
# Intimate Tourism: The process of verbal exchange in intimate spaces through the online hospitality network. Social Aspects of the Internet Conference, Warsaw, Poland. December, 2006.
# Intimate Tourism: Intensity, meaning, and offline friendship within the online hospitality network. General Online Research conference, Leipzig, Germany. February, 2007.
# No More Cold Researchers: Engagement and bias as characteristics of the modern interdisciplinary minds. Work in Progress: Research Spaces, Research Journeys, University of Warwick, December, 2007.