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The Doctoral Program in Law, Society and Tourism presented here to be taught in accordance with RD 99/2011, integrates, replaces and expands the scientific field of the current Doctoral Program in Tourism implemented by agreement of the Governing Council of the Canary Islands on February 10, 2011 (BOC No. 33 of February 15, 2011), and registered in the Registry of Universities, Centers and Degrees.
The proposed PhD Programme is based on the PhD in Tourism, currently in force at the University of La Laguna since February 2011. This programme was organised around five major lines of research, although it is common for work to be linked to several of these lines. These lines have an interdisciplinary emphasis. The five major lines of research were the following:
· Tourist destinations (economic, social, environmental, planning, image, promotion, etc.)
· Tourism products and modalities (rural tourism, active tourism, sun and beach, etc.)
· Tourists (attitudes, motivation, decision making, etc.)
· Resources (natural, cultural, etc.)
· Companies and subsectors (hotels, intermediaries, etc.)
Record
Starting from the Doctoral Programme in Tourism, this new project has broadened its approach to related research areas, such as Social Sciences and Law, which are obviously of great relevance in tourism studies, but also have an enormously diverse path of their own, which is reflected in this proposal. It integrates some of the most productive teams from the Faculties of Law, Political and Social Sciences, Economics and the School of Business and Tourism, which, as will be detailed, teach a series of degrees and master's degrees that can adequately feed this Doctoral Programme.
Diploma in Tourism studies were started at the University of La Laguna in 1998. This qualification was replaced in 2009 by the Degree in Tourism. Since 2007, the Master's Degree in Tourism Management and Planning has been taught uninterruptedly, and since February 2011, the Doctorate in Tourism. Studies related to tourism are in high demand and have high professional opportunities in the Canary Islands. These studies are integrated into the University School of Business Sciences, which currently also houses the Degree in Accounting and Finance, as well as the official Master's Degrees in Foreign Trade Management and in Tourism Management and Planning.
The Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences is also a relevant centre for our doctoral programmes, with degrees in Business Administration and Management and Economics, as well as the Master's Degree in Regional Development, Training and Employment.
The Faculty of Geography and History also develops relevant studies, including the Degree in Geography, from which a good number of doctoral students have completed the Doctorate in Tourism, which is at the origin of this proposal.
The Sociology degree courses were integrated into the ULL from the 1999-2000 academic year (Official Gazette No. 189 of 9 August 1999, ULL Resolution of 9 July 1999), in the Higher Centre for Political and Social Sciences. Prior to its creation, Social Work studies had been implemented since 1985, in the University School of the same name, which continues today as a degree. Its current name is the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication, which integrates the degrees of Sociology, Social Work and Social Anthropology (its implementation begins in the 2012-2013 academic year). The Master's Degree in Community Social Intervention is taught at this Faculty.
Law studies in Tenerife have a long history, which can be traced back to the 18th century with many twists and turns. In the contemporary period, they have been consolidated since the creation of the University of La Laguna in 1927, which has Law among its founding studies. The Faculty is one of the oldest in the ULL.
The current degree in Law was approved at the ULL Governing Council meeting on 22 October 2007.
Its implementation began in the 2010-11 academic year and is now fully implemented. In addition to these studies, the Faculty offers the Degree in Labour Relations, also implemented, the Master's Degree in Occupational Risk Prevention and the Master's Degree in Urban Planning Law (in its third edition), with a Master's Degree in Economic Law currently in the process.
On the other hand, in terms of doctoral training, within the Faculty of Law, the Department of Basic Legal Disciplines, promoter of this project - according to the Department Council agreement of October 31, 2013 -, made up of the areas of Administrative Law, Civil Law, Criminal Law, Roman Law and History of Law, has offered a doctoral program, without interruption, since the 1990-1991 academic year, in accordance with the successive regulatory regulations, from the one entitled "The transformations of Law in a changing world" to the latest,
"Natural resources, land use planning and soil", now in extinction, limited to the research phase. These doctoral programmes have led to the reading of more than 35 doctoral theses.
Finally, it is worth highlighting the importance of the University Institute of Political and Social Sciences of the ULL, which has actively promoted this Doctorate proposal and is a key promoter and driver of it.
This is an interdisciplinary centre dedicated primarily to carrying out research projects, R&D&I contracts (basic and applied social research) and postgraduate and specialised teaching.
Research capacity
The University of La Laguna is ranked in the upper-middle range among medium-sized Spanish universities.
According to the ranking of Spanish universities carried out by the I-UGR group, the University of Granada is ranked 11th out of 45 for the period 2008-2012 in the area of "Other Social Sciences". The preparation of these rankings is always debatable in terms of the criteria used, but the data presented places our University relatively well, especially if we take into account its size.
The research capacity of the University of La Laguna in the field of tourism can be seen from the publication of a ranking of Latin American scientific research in tourism in volume 22 of the journal Estudios y Perspectivas de Turismo. In it, the University of La Laguna is ranked 10th among universities in Spain and Latin America, both in terms of publication of articles in English-language journals and publication in Latin American journals.
Much of the research activity of the promoters of this Doctorate is organized around the University Institute of Social Research and Tourism, mentioned above, created by Order of October 27, 1982 (BOE January 12, 1983, p. 777) within the University of La Laguna. It was originally conceived as a center that would promote research on this subject in the Archipelago, and to a certain extent also as the germ of a future Faculty that would promote degrees related to its object in the Islands. In 2007 we received the ANEP evaluation of the activity of the University Institute of Social Research and Tourism.
This evaluation gives an overall assessment of the activity carried out by the Institute as "good". This Institute is a research centre of special relevance in the international context, having promoted or participated in a multitude of national and international research projects. The research groups of the University Institute for Social Research and Tourism (IUCC.PP. and SS.) have addressed issues related to this problem, among which we can highlight tourism, fishing activity, migration, management of natural resources and protected areas, heritage, religions, science and information technologies, education, etc., analysed from transversal approaches such as gender or governance among many others. These issues have been specified in multiple projects financed by the Government of the Canary Islands, by the Ministry of Education, by the European Union or by other international funders, such as those detailed later in this report. In some of them (Project Femmes, financed by the EU), for example, explicit recognition has been achieved by organisations such as the European Parliament. The Institute also publishes a journal (PASOS, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Heritage. ISSN 1695-7121) that has become an international reference in the field of heritage and tourism. This journal has been rated among the 40 best journals in the world in the field of tourism and heritage in a recent international study. See «Rating tourism and hospitality journals» (McKercher, B.; Law, R. and Lam, T. (2006) Tourism Management, 27: 1235-1252).
This Institute has provided a way to promote research carried out in the Social Sciences at the ULL, especially from disciplines such as Sociology, Social Anthropology, Economics, Constitutional Law, etc., which thus find a point of union to address interdisciplinary projects. This challenge of interdisciplinarity constitutes one of the explicit goals of the centre for future activity, as well as the way to achieve scientifically and socially relevant results. In general, it is precisely the work carried out at the intersections between the different social sciences, or between these and the life sciences, for example, that tend to offer the most interesting and innovative results. For this reason, many of the projects carried out by the centre follow this pattern, overcoming the rigidity of departmental academic frameworks linked to a single area of knowledge. In this same sense, one of the goals we are currently setting ourselves is to promote the recognition of work carried out in the Canary Islands or about the Canary Islands in the world scientific literature, and to this end we promote publications carried out by the Institute in journals included in the JCR, which for certain Social Sciences in Spain is to a certain extent a challenge.
For the Canary Islands, the presence of our Institute offers, in addition to the possibility of promoting cutting-edge research in general terms, the possibility of obtaining expert advice in a whole series of areas in which the research groups of the IUCC.PP. and SS. have demonstrated their worth. In this sense, we have collaborated in applied projects of various kinds, ranging from the Canary Islands' fishing development plans to others related to tourism, science and new technologies, gender or education, to name a few of the recurring themes. During 2009 and 2010, we hosted the Tourism Structuring Project of the University of La Laguna, which attempted to unite efforts on this subject between the different research groups of the ULL, in order to gain critical mass in human capital and scientific curriculum that allows access to projects from European calls. Since then, the theme of tourism has integrated a good number of the members of the Institute, uniting human capital previously dispersed in other Departments and Institutes of the ULL.
The group of law professors participating in this doctoral program has an accredited and recognized research activity that is reflected in multiple publications, both monographs in national publishers, as well as research articles in the reference journals of each legal specialty, and applied research through projects and contracts in matters of interest to society. In particular, members of consolidated research groups such as Administrative Law, Civil Law, Criminal Law and Financial and Tax Law join this program. Without prejudice to the research specific to each group and legal discipline, some concurrent lines of research are recognized, such as the legal specialties of the Canary Islands, the organization and protection of land in all its dimensions, and the judicial guarantee of rights and interests.
Potential demand for the Doctoral Program in Law, Society and Tourism
The potential demand for this proposed doctoral programme is supported by the demand for the Doctorate in Tourism from which it was born, which currently has a total of 27 students enrolled. The 27 theses in progress are being supervised by 11 professors of this doctoral programme assigned to different areas of research.
These professors and their research areas are:
– Eduardo Parra López, Business Organization Area (1 thesis in progress)
– Francisco José Villar Rojas, Administrative Law Department (1 thesis in progress)
– Francisco José Ledesma Rodríguez, Economic Analysis Department (1 thesis in progress)
– José J. Pascual Fernández, Department of Social Anthropology (2 theses in progress)
– Josefa Rosa Marrero Rodríguez, Sociology Department (1 thesis in progress)
– Agustín Santana Talavera, Department of Social Anthropology (5 theses in progress)
– Moisés Ramón Simancas Cruz, Human Geography Area (8 theses in progress)
– Noemí Padrón Fumero, Applied Economics Area (1 thesis in progress)
– Raúl Hernández Martín, Applied Economics Area (3 theses in progress)
– Ricardo Jesús Díaz Armas, Marketing and Market Research Area (2 thesis projects)
– Manuel Santana Turégano, Sociology Area (2 thesis projects)
The doctoral programme proposed here will certainly have a much larger number of students as it will integrate a much broader subject area and a much more diverse set of research groups.
The number of new students for the first and second years will be 25. According to the Regulations on progress and permanence in official degrees at the University of La Laguna, the maximum number of part-time students in this programme is 10, to be included within the total of 25 mentioned above.
Integration of the doctoral programme into the ULL's R&D&I strategy
The doctoral programme in Society, Law and Tourism is part of the R&D&I strategy of the ULL, which includes the development of the Tricontinental Atlantic Campus (CEI-CANARIAS) (International Campus of Excellence), a space of excellence that should be, from 2015, an Atlantic reference in Europe as a receiving and catalytic axis of talent in teaching, research, innovation and transfer projects with Africa and Latin America, and under the common denominator of a model of integral sustainability for its development. The Campus is already becoming an indispensable element for the development towards the new economic, productive and social structure of the Canary Islands. One of the actions of the aforementioned Tricontinental Atlantic Campus is directly linked to the research lines of the doctoral programme in Society, Law and Tourism. One of the priority lines of the aforementioned campus is tourism, as it constitutes one of the key elements of the economy of the Canary Islands.
Improvements in competitiveness are based on a sustainable and global approach, which will strengthen key sectors, promote new sectors linked to the areas of thematic specialization of the Campus and help generate employment. This model will take advantage of the geostrategic position of the Canary Islands as a bridge from Europe to West Africa, Macaronesia and Latin America. For this reason, the Tricontinental Atlantic Campus will act as a university hub within the national project to strengthen the Canary Islands as a strategic tricontinental European bridge in the Atlantic.
The subprojects that define it cover all areas of excellence: teaching improvement, adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), scientific improvement, innovation and knowledge transfer, campus transformation and internationalisation. The studies of Law, Social and Economic Sciences and Tourism have a special relevance in this context, since in the processes of social transformation sponsored by the Campus of Excellence, minimising negative impacts in both the social and environmental spheres is a key element. Likewise, the specialisation of various programme researchers in issues related to governance will facilitate the implementation of many of the proposed innovations, avoiding potential negative effects.
At CEI-CANARIAS, educational platforms of quality and excellence are developed within the framework of the International School of University Postgraduate Studies, while at the same time strengthening large infrastructures of excellence. The effort and progress of the ULL has been fundamental in recent years, as a catalyst for talent through its training activities, carrying out a large percentage of the research carried out in the Canary Islands, transferring the knowledge generated to society and the productive fabric and acquiring true commitments for a productive model based on knowledge.
Integration of the PhD programme in Law, Society and Tourism at the ULL Doctoral School
It should be noted that the PhD programme in Law, Society and Tourism was created in association with several centres (Faculties of Law, Political and Social Sciences, Economic and Business Sciences and the University School of Business Sciences). As it is mandatory to assign the programme to a single centre in order to integrate it into an internal quality assurance system, and given that the University Institutes at the ULL do not have this procedure approved, the Faculty of Law was chosen as the affiliation centre, bearing in mind a future link between the programme and the Doctoral School of the University of La Laguna. The Faculty of Law was chosen in this scenario due to its greater contribution of professors compared to the other faculties participating in the programme. In the Resolution of 17 January 2013, which provides for the publication of the Regulations for Official Doctoral Studies at the University of La Laguna, the way is opened for the creation of the Doctoral School of the ULL (Art. 38). This means that, although during a transitional period, the ULL's Doctoral programmes will be assigned to specific Faculties, with the creation of the Doctoral School, as soon as possible they will be subsumed within it. This will lead to the Doctoral School generating an internal quality assurance system developed specifically for doctoral studies.
The creation of the Doctoral School was approved at the ordinary session of the Governing Council of the University of La Laguna on 26 September 2013, pending its development and the creation of its quality assurance system.
With all this, the ULL aims to maintain its doctoral indicators and establish a strategy that will allow it to enhance its research results, taking them beyond those currently in place. The objective of all this is for the new doctoral programs to act as drivers for the research developed at the institution and promote greater attention to its researchers in training, while also regulating the termination processes of doctoral programs organized in accordance with previous regulatory provisions.