Rate My Professor Kevin Lyons

Emeritus Professor Kevin Lyons is a leading academic in leisure and tourism management at the University of Newcastle, serving as a Casual Academic in the Newcastle Business School within the Faculty of Business and Law. He holds a Doctor of Education and a Master of Arts from the University of Georgia (USA), a Bachelor of Science in Human Services from Thomas Edison State College (USA), and an Associate Diploma in Recreation from Kuring-Gai College of Advanced Education. Lyons has enjoyed a distinguished career marked by extensive leadership roles, including Deputy Head of the Faculty of Business and Law, Head of the Tourism Discipline (2006-2011 and recently returned), Deputy Head of School and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Newcastle Business School (2013-2015), Assistant Dean for Research and External Engagement in the Faculty of Business and Law, and member of the Faculty Executive for over seven years. Externally, he has contributed as Deputy Chair and Director of the Hunter Regional Tourism Organisation (2009-2012), Treasurer of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies (2005-2010), establisher and chair of the CAUTHE Special Interest Group on Volunteer Tourism (2009-2012), and co-founder and member of the World Leisure Commission for Children and Youth (2003-2012).

His research specializations span leisure, sports, recreation, and tourism management and policy, with a focus on the Hunter as a regional tourism destination, visitor economy generation, volunteer tourism, global mobility programs, engaged scholarship, knowledge transfer among tourism stakeholders, volunteering models' impacts, and education/marketing needs of tourism SMEs. Key publications include the co-edited book Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism: International Case Study Perspectives (2008), chapters such as 'Gap Year Travel Alternatives: Gen-Y, Volunteer Tourism and Global Citizenship' (2011), 'Volunteer Tourism' (2010), 'Cultural and Environmental Awareness through Sustainable Tourism Education' (2017), 'Using Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility as a Transition to Shared Value for the Sharing Economy' (2019), and 'Adventure Tour Operators in Natural Areas' (2025). Lyons has earned major awards, including the Gold Award for ‘Contributions to Local Tourism by an Individual’ at the 2013 Qantas Link Hunter and Central Coast Tourism Awards, Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Supervision Excellence for the Faculty of Business and Law (2013), Vice-Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Teaching (2007), and Vice-Chancellor’s Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2006). He serves as Associate Editor of Leisure Sciences since 2005 and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Travel Research (A* ranked) and Tourism Recreation Research (A ranked), influencing tourism scholarship and policy through critical frameworks and empirical studies on volunteerism and regional development.