Key Concepts in Theme Park Studies: Understanding Tourism and Leisure Spaces

This book offers a comprehensive, multidisciplinary introduction to theme parks and the field of theme park studies. It identifies and discusses relevant economic, social, and cultural as well as medial, historical, and geographical aspects of theme parks worldwide, from the big international theme park chains to smaller, regional, family-operated parks. The book also describes the theories and methods that have been used to study theme parks in various academic disciplines and reviews the major contexts in which theme parks have been studied. By providing the necessary backgrounds, theories, and methods to analyze and understand theme parks both as a business field and as a socio-cultural phenomenon, this book will be a great resource to students, academics from all disciplines interested in theme parks, and professionals and policy-makers in the leisure and entertainment as well as the urban planning sector.

Salvador Anton Clavé is Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis at the University Rovira i Virgili (Catalonia, Spain). He has been a senior visiting scholar at the George Washington University (USA) and currently also serves as Director of Tourism Innovation at Eurecat – The Technology Centre of Catalonia. His research concentrates, among other interests, on visitor attractions and theme parks development, performance, and impact; visitors spatial behaviour; and digital technologies and tourism. He is the author of “The Global Theme Park Industry” (2007) and other publications in the field. In 2021 he received the American Association of Geographers Roy Wolfe Award presented by the Recreation, Tourism and Sport Specialty Group.

Filippo Carlà-Uhink is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Potsdam (Germany). He specializes, among other research interests, in the reception of classical antiquity in modern popular culture and in the modern visual and performing arts. Carlà-Uhink is the author of "Representations of Classical Greece in Theme Parks" (2020) and of numerous other articles and book chapters on the reception of classical antiquity in theme parks. Together with Florian Freitag he directed the research group “‘Here You Leave Today’: Time and Temporality in Theme Parks,” which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the period 2014-2017.