On July 1st, 2020, Kelsey Mac Leod Johansen joined the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, at the University of Waterloo. For the 2020-2021 academic year, she is teaching: Introduction to Tourism; Introduction to the Study of Recreation and Leisure; Outdoor Recreation, Tourism, and the Natural Environment; and, Theories and Evidence for Therapeutic Recreation Practice.

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Kelsey's doctoral thesis, completed in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, passed external examination in October 2020 and she is awaiting April 2021 graduation. While at Otago (2013 to 2016), Kelsey enjoyed appointments as a Tutor on Tourism, Global Tourism, Research Methods, and Events Management Papers within the Department. Kelsey's studies were funded by a Doctoral Scholarship from the University which included field research and conference presentation funding valued at over $100,000 (NZD). Her research examined the culture of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) participation in New Zealand, the convergence and divergence of programmatic, host and guest values, and the role of food and cultural exchange in shaping the WWOOF experience drawing on the fields of tourism, anthropology, and geography. Kelsey's thesis was informed by seven months of ethnographic fieldwork WWOOFing on the South Island of New Zealand. She was supervised by Associate Professor Anna Thompson (nee Carr) and Professor Tara Duncan. You can read more about Kelsey's thesis here.

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For the 2019-2020 academic year, Kelsey taught in the School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Lakehead University. She taught courses in: Adventure Therapy and Nature-Based Therapeutic Recreation; Program Planning; Risk Management and Legal Liability in Outdoor Recreation; and, Agritourism. In this role, she also supervised two fourth-year Directed Studies students whose work explored areas of therapeutic camping through a placement and undergraduate student research partnership with Camp Quality. 

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From July 2016 to June 2019, Kelsey fulfilled a 3-year limited term appointment as an Instructor at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management. While there, she sole taught and developed courses on: Recreation & Leisure Concepts, Leisure Travel, Sustainable Nature-Based Tourism, Advanced Nature-Based Tourism Management and Planning, Agricultural Tourism and Community Development, Program Planning, Research Design, Inclusive Physical Activity and Leisure, Therapeutic Recreation, and Clinical Aspects of Therapeutic Recreation. Additional service to the Faculty included work on the Indigenous Engagement Circle, and supervision of graduate students. Kelsey was also Co-Investigator on a Sport Manitoba funded research project which entailed an evaluation of the Bilateral Funding program and its’ capacity to improve access to sport and recreation for Indigenous children and youth in Manitoba. This project was lead by Dr. Joannie Halas. Kelsey's work on the project included spearheading the Research Ethics Board process, and training, supervising a Research Assistant (RA) through the qualitative analysis of stakeholder interview transcripts, including codebook development, coding and analysis, and mentoring eight Transcription Assistants. Responsibilities also included allocation of workloads, tracking progress, coordination of weekly meetings, and budgetary approvals. The research team is collaborative writing several publications to disseminate these results. You can learn more about this project here.
 

From 2011 to 2013, Kelsey was appointed as a Lecturer in the School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Lakehead University with a cross appointment to the Departments of Geography and Anthropology. While at Lakehead, she taught: Risk Management and Legal Liability in Outdoor Recreation;  Theory and Practice of Tourism; Nature-Based Tourism; the 1st year Outdoor Recreation Seminar;  Foundations of Outdoor Recreation; Food Security, Agricultural Tourism and Rural Community Development; Socio-Cultural Anthropology; and, Concepts in Ethnography.

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A graduate from Lakehead University, Kelsey Mac Leod Johansen holds a Masters of Environmental Studies (MES - Nature-Based Recreation and Tourism) and undergraduate degrees in Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism (HBOR), Anthropology (HBSc) and Philosophy (BA). Following her Masters' studies, Kelsey was awarded a year long North Ontario Heritage Fund (NOHFC) internship as the Recreation and Tourism Development Coordinator for the Town of Marathon after which she took a one year contract as the Acting Community Environmental Action Plan Coordinator for the City of Thunder Bay. 

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Kelsey has presented academic papers at international conferences (including the Monitoring and Managing Visitors in Parks and Protected Areas Conference, ATLAS Gastronomy and Tourism Research Group Meeting, Travel and Tourism Research Association, etc.) and won the Best Paper Prize at the 2017 Leisure Studies Association Conference in Leeds, UK.  She was an invited panelist on the 2019 Lakehead University Teaching and Learning Week Panel on Graduate Supervision. In 2017 and 2018, Kelsey contributed an Advanced NVivo Skills and Troubleshooting Workshop to the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Education, the College of Nursing (Rady Faculty of Health Sciences), the Centre on Aging, and the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management’s joint Summer Research Training Institute.