Saida Palou Rubio

With a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Barcelona, Saida Palou Rubio was awarded the 2011 Agustí Duran i Sanpere City of Barcelona History Prize for her thesis titled Barcelona, destinació turística. Promoció pública, turisme, imatges i ciutat (1888-2010) (Barcelona, Tourist Destination: Public Promotion, Tourism, Images, and City). Her chief contribution in this work was demonstrating that, rather than chance phenomena, conceptions of tourist Barcelona were part of an organised and planned process in which images played a major role. She is currently a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Girona, where her main area of research is the cultural and political history of contemporary tourism and tourist uses of cultural heritage. She is also a member of research groups in competitive and knowledge transfer projects, as well as being engaged in initiatives of scientific cooperation in Sahrawi refugee camps.