Maria Gravari-Barbas

University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Maria Gravari-Barbas has a degree in Architecture and Urban Design (University of Athens, 1985) and a PhD in Geography and Planning (Paris IV – Sorbonne, 1991). In Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, she is the Director of the EIREST, a multidisciplinary research team dedicated to tourism studies, with focus on cultural heritage, development, and urban-tourism evolutions. Since 2009 she is the director of the UNESCO Chair on Tourism and the coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN network ‘Tourism, Culture, Development’. From 2020 to 2025 she was the Chair of the Cultural Heritage focus area of Una Europa and the Head of the Joint Doctoral Committee of the Una-Her-Doc.

Her research focuses on urban and metropolitan transformations in relation with heritagization, gentrification and tourism. She is the scientific coordinator of the JPI CH “Cultural Heritage in the Urban Peripheries” (CUMET); and the of the Franco-Canadian project "Les 'entrepreneurs du patrimoine': Mécanismes, outils et durabilité des projets de redéveloppement du patrimoine en France et au Québec" (HerEntrep).

She is member of the French Academy of Architecture and of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism.

In the recent years she authored or coauthored the books:
Tourism and the Metropolis. Exploring conceptual and geographical frontiers (2025) Westminster Press; Tourism gentrification (2025), Elgar; Cultural Heritage on the Urban Peripheries Towards New Research Paradigms (2025) Routledge; Tourism & Fashion. Parallel Stories (2023) Emerald; Tourism and architectural simulacra (2021) Routledge; Tourism Dynamics in Everyday Places: Before and After Tourism, (2021) Routledge; A research Agenda for Heritage Tourism (2020) Elgar; Le patrimoine mondial, Mise en tourisme, mise en images (2020) L’Harmattan; Lieux ordinaires, avant et après le tourisme, (2018) PUCA; Tourism and Gentrification in Contemporary Metropolises. International Perspectives (2017) Routledge; World Heritage Sites and Tourism. Global and Local Relations, (2017) Routledge.