Anu Valtonen University of Lapland, Finland

I received my Ph.D. from the Aalto University School of Economics in 2004. Since 2005, I have acted as a marketing professor at the University of Lapland. Moreover, I have 10 years of business experience within creative knowledge industries. My research interests center, firstly, on cultural and critical approaches to consumption, marketing and tourism. Drawing upon practice-based approaches, anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies and semiotics, I have explored topics such as body and gender, service work, knowing, sensing, and weather. Secondly, my research interests center on the development of qualitative research methodologies (ethnographies, focus groups, interviews, projective techniques, narratives). My most recent research project investigates sleep as a social practice in the context of tourism, consumer culture and media-intensive economy. The other recent project is concerned with the role of all the senses in the meaning-making processes of consumer culture and business organizations, moving thereby beyond the visual gaze.