Professor Chin-Ee Ong, a Singaporean scholar, is Professor of Cultural and Tourism Management at Macao University of Tourism. His research focuses on the cultural and creative dimensions of tourism and heritage. He is Editor-in-Chief of *Tourist Studies* and holds key editorial and leadership positions in international tourism academic associations and journals.
Prof. Stefano Malatesta is Geographer and Associate Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He is member of the Steering Committee of the IGU Commission on Islands. He is member of the Board of MaRHE Center (Rep of Maldives) and former member (2018-2022) of the Executive Committee of ISISA. He teaches Human Geography of Small Island Systems, Geography and Didactics, and Tourism. He served (2018-2021) as Chair of the Working Group on Small Island and Archipelagos (AGeI). He coordinated one of the research groups of Island4Future (https://is4future.uniroma3.it/progetto) and he leads both the Supervisory Board and the University of Milano-Bicocca unit of MCSDN-MEDiverSEAty (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101119700). His main research topics are Human Geography of Small Islands, Geopolitics of Indian Ocean, Ocean Literacy, Children and Youth Geographies, and Education for Sustainable Development. In 2026 he co-authored (with Arturo Gallia) Seasonal Islands Geographies (Springer) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-03390-1
Prof. Dr. Aikaterini Manthiou is the Director of the Marketing Specialisation and Full Professor of Marketing at NEOMA Business School, France. Her primary research interests are tourism marketing, ethical tourism and digital tourism transformation. Her research has been published in leading journals, including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, and International Journal of Hospitality Management, among others. Prof. Manthiou has also led several special issues for ranked academic journals.
Arturo Gallia is Associate Professor of Geography (GEOG-01/A) at the Department of Humanities, Università Roma Tre. His research areas concern island societies in the Mediterranean; historical cartography; and the didactics of Geography. He teaches Historical Geography (BA) and Maritime Spaces Geography (MA). He was PI of PRIN 2022 “Islands 4 Future” (is4future.uniroma3.it) and coordinator of the Roma Tre unit of PRIN 2022 PNRR “Envisioning Landscapes”. He is a member of the AGEI Steering Committee and coordinates the AGEI commission on “Geography of Archipelagic States and Small Islands”. He is the coordinator of the Organizing Committee of the International Night of Geography (www.geonight.net). He has published in major Italian scientific geography journals and is the author of several monographs, including Seasonal Island Geographies: The Human Geography of Italian Small Islands (Springer, 2026) with Stefano Malatesta.
