51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ

Is volunteering abroad a contemporary iteration of the 'White Man’s Burden’? At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem urged would-be imperialists to ‘send forth’ their best people in the service of colonial ‘improvement.’ In the Twenty-First Century, the placement of—often young, ‘gap year’—tourists in the Global South through so-called ‘voluntourism’ schemes is big business, and embroiled in questions about its ‘neo-colonial’ qualities.

This exploratory workshop problematises the transnational movement of people through volunteering programmes, and asks: what are the historical antecedents of ‘voluntourism’? How might historians contextualise, and engage critically with, this growing and controversial industry? Led by (51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ), and (Royal Holloway), the aim of the workshop is to explore approaches to the problem of volunteer tourism, and generate/refine research questions and methodologies that will help give direction to future research and funding bids.