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Connections 50+ Presents Cambridge Third Age Learning

Reimaging Tourism through the Lens of Care

For avid travellers and lifelong learners.

Professor Karla Boluk draws on her relationship building with community partners, including Six Nations of the Grand, to offer a meaningful way to reflect on personal travel practices. She imagines tourism as a web of relationships that we have the opportunity, and responsibility to nurture. Travel is often imagined as a source of leisure and discovery, yet the ways we design, manage, and participate in it frequently overlook a fundamental human value: care. This talk explores how feminist care ethics, grounded in relationality, responsibility, and attentiveness, may help us rethink and rebuild tourism in ways that honour people, places, and the more‑than‑human world. Dr. Boluk argues that care is not a soft add‑on but a transformative framework for understanding our connections to destinations and to one another. By examining everyday encounters between hosts, visitors, workers, and environments, we will consider how care ethics encourages more reciprocal, respectful, and regenerative forms of engagement.

About the speaker

Dr. Karla Boluk’s work sits at the intersection of tourism, community development, and social justice. As an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, she is internationally recognized for advancing feminist care ethics as a transformative framework for reimagining tourism planning, policy, and practice. Her research explores how tourism may foster more equitable, inclusive, and regenerative futures by centring relationships, responsibility, and collective well‑being. Her work is deeply collaborative, shaped by long‑standing partnerships with communities, colleagues, and students. She has published widely on sustainable tourism, social entrepreneurship, and ethical engagement, and her scholarship is known for bridging rigorous academic inquiry with grounded, real‑world impact. She is a Visiting Professor in the York Business School at York St John University, UK, the Co-chair of Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI), and was appointed to the Global Roster of Experts by the International Science Council. Dr. Boluk currently holds several research grants, including Six Nations of the Grand Pathways to Reconciliation: Reimagining Tourism through the Two Row Wampum, and a SSHRC Connection Grant entitled Indigenous Tourism Futures: Co-creating Decolonial Pathways.

About Cambridge Third Age Learning

Third Age Learning is a movement that encourages learning and discovery experiences for those in the 'third age'. Together, the Cambridge Third Age Learning (CTAL) group and Cambridge Public Library present monthly lectures at the Old Post Office, a part of the library’s Connections 50+ suite. CTAL sources and selects lecturers with engaging topics to inspire new thinking and engage inquisitive minds.

Accessibility
If you require an accessibility accommodation for this program or event, please tell us how we can meet your needs as soon as possible so arrangements can be organized. If you require a sign language interpreter, please let us know at least two-weeks (10 working weekdays) before the program date. 
  
If you are attending a registered program with a support person, please add your support worker as a guest when you sign up. 

COST: Free

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