Samantha Murdy

Samantha Murdy is an Associate Professor in the Peter Faber Business School at Australian Catholic University. She has previously held academic positions at the University of Strathclyde and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where she completed her PhD examining destination brand performance across different travel situations.

Her research sits at the intersection of tourism, marketing and outdoor recreation, with a particular focus on visitor behaviour, sustainability, conservation, risk and responsibility. A significant strand of her current research examines multiday and long-distance trails, including their management, branding, conservation and funding, alongside questions of hiker safety, preparedness and the use of technology in outdoor environments. Her emerging work also explores moral governance in outdoor recreation, examining how responsibility, legitimacy, risk and acceptable behaviour are constructed and contested, particularly in relation to activities such as illegal or restricted hiking.

More broadly, Samantha's research encompasses destination branding, visitor behaviour, volunteer tourism and tourism sustainability, with an emphasis on research that has practical implications for destinations, protected areas and outdoor recreation managers. She has worked with industry and community stakeholders and has presented her research internationally. Her work has been published in leading tourism journals, including Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research and Tourism Management.