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Consortium of Tbilisi State University and University of Innsbruck

The first Consortium of Tbilisi State University and the University of Innsbruck was formed in 2021 to help establish a resilience paradigm for mountain destinations, particularly in the new challenging realities in Austria and Georgia after the post-COVID-19 period.
 

A research group composed of young and already recognized professionals from the Department of Human Geography of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences won the highly competitive grant competition that enabled them to contribute to mountain settlements and welfare of their populations.
 

Gvantsa Salukvadze, a team member and an affiliated researcher at the University of Zurich, said that the purpose of the partnership under the project “ReMoDe: preparations for research partnership between the countries: strengthening the resilience for mountain destinations in the Alps and Caucasus” is to strengthen the role of academia in coping with societal challenges and contributing to resilient tourism development in mountain regions. The project concept is particularly relevant with regard to the Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which aims to create and scale-up ESD while accelerating progress towards sustainable development.
 

Gvatnsa Salukvadze also noted that knowledge transfer between research fields of both universities and other institutions will be one of the important project outcomes. The Caucasus region, which has been established as a tourist hub in recent years, represents a unique opportunity for the University of Innsbruck to diversify knowledge, expand the scope and area of research and establish new academic interactions. However, the focus of collaboration established within the framework of the project on conducting scientifically based research of resilience for mountain destinations is stemming from the needs of both countries. 

 

The University of Innsbruck has multiyear research expertise in the fields, that are extremely beneficial to Georgia: (i) destination resilience; (ii) sustainable tourism development; (iii) climate mitigation; (iv) entrepreneurship, innovation, and family businesses in tourism, (v) tourism stakeholder analysis and institutionalizing these fields into research and higher education programs.
 

Following the preparatory stage, the future academic partnership framework will be crucial in contributing to future national action strategies by generating empirical knowledge in evaluating mountain tourism resilience.
 

The project is funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation within the framework of the APPEAR project. The main essence of the preparatory funding is the unification of the institutions of the Caucasus and the Alpine regions through the consolidation of the University of Innsbruck and Tbilisi State University. The partnership will set a precedent for the Universities of Innsbruck and TSU to get united in studying the resilience of mountain destinations in both countries.