Congratulations to Dr. Moritz Langer on defending his PhD!

Enlarge

Moritz began his academic journey with a BA at our Department of Geography at LMU Munich, earned his Master’s degree in Amsterdam, and returned to LMU for his PhD in economic geography under the supervision of Prof. Jürgen Schmude.

His research over the past years has focused on the negative consequences of tourism growth: precarious working conditions, overcrowding and privatization of public space, shrinking living space for locals, and an increasing economic dependence on tourism.
At the heart of his work: touristification and degrowth – the idea of intentionally reducing tourism-related energy and resource use in favor of well-being, equity, and sustainability.

For his empirical research on degrowth and sustainable transformation in Barcelona and the anti-touristification protests in Mallorca, Moritz conducted interviews and focus groups with local activists, tourism workers, experts, and stakeholders.

Key findings from his research include:

• Enforcing degrowth policies is challenging due to the strong structural dependence of local businesses and services on tourism.
• Locals tend to place more trust in grassroots initiatives and bottom-up action like strengthening economic democracy than in top-down political measures.
• Tourism workers have little agency regarding a sustainable transformation of the tourism sector. Their voices are significantly underrepresented in both the industry and academic research.
• Financial dependency, discriminatory social structures and misinformation are the central factors preventing a broader protest against the negative impacts of tourism by locals.

Learn more about Moritz's work here:

• COVID-19 as a paradigm shift? Insights from the degrowth debate in tourism
• Resistance and power dynamics in tourist destinations: a study of Mallorca’s anti-touristification protests through Bourdieu’s theory of practice
• Transformational job-policies as pathways to a degrowth future in tourism? Understanding the workers’ perspective
• Research Gate Profile
• Google Scholar Profile