EDWARD H. HUIJBENS (b. 1976) Geographer, scholar of tourism, professor and chair of Wageningen University cultural geography research group (GEO). Edward finished a B.Sc. in Geography at the University of Iceland in the spring 2000, MA and later a PhD in Cultural Geography mid-year 2005, both at Durham University, England. In 2004 – 2006, along with completing the PhD, he taught and did research at the University of Iceland, both in the faculty of science and the faculty of economics and business administration. From 2006 – 2015 he directed the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre and developed a holistic research agenda for tourism during a period of the industry’s exponential growth in Iceland. From 2015 till 2019 Edward was a professor at the school of social sciences and humanities at the University of Akureyri, where he also served as department head for the faculty of social sciences and law from 2017 till February 2019.

Edward works on spatial theory, issues of regional development, landscape perceptions, the role of transport in tourism and polar tourism. 

Beyond regular academic mentoring and course teaching Edward has taught twice on the prestigious programme Semester at Sea, run by the Institute of Shipboard Education from the US, autumn 2016 and autumn 2018. On the latter occasion he ran Global Studies, the course all student aboard are require to attend. Edward is the author of articles in several scholarly journals in both Iceland and internationally and has co-edited Technology in Society/Society in Technology (2005, University of Iceland Press), Sensi/able Spaces: Space, art and the environment (2007, Cambridge Scholars Press) and The Illuminating Traveller (2008, University of Jyväskylä), Tourism and the Anthropocene (2016, Routledge) and is one of two authors of the book Icelandic Tourism (Forlagið, 2013, second edition in 2024). His most recent book Developing Earthly Attachements in the Anthropocene was published in April 2021 with Routledge. 

In addition to his academic roles, Edward has been politically active with the Left Green party in Iceland, serving in several municipal committees for his home community, Akureyri (pop. 18.000), acting as reserve member of parliament and as of 2017 serving as the party’s vice chairman as the party led the government coalition formed after the 2017 autumn elections in Iceland.