Professor Gianna Moscardo has qualifications in applied psychology and sociology and joined the School of Business at James Cook University in 2002.

Prior to joining JCU Gianna was the Tourism Research project leader for the CRC Reef Research for eight years. Her qualifications in applied psychology and sociology support her research interests in understanding how communities and organisations perceive, plan for, and manage tourism development opportunities, how tourists learn about and from their travel experiences and how to design more sustainable tourism experiences. 

She has published extensively on tourism and related areas with more than 200 refereed papers or book chapters.  Professor Moscardo has been invited to speak on issues related to tourism in New Zealand, South Africa, Botswana, Italy, Finland, Austria, Croatia, Wales, Spain and the United States. Her recent project areas include evaluating tourism as a tool for economic development in rural regions, tourist experience analysis, cross-cultural issues in tourism, designing effective tourist interpretation and tourist storytelling.

Current research is focussed on understanding heritage interpretation in tourist settings, tourist storytelling, and using Quality of Life as a way to investigate tourism impacts and community development.  In 2014 Prof. Moscardo was appointed Chair of the international BEST EN (Building Excellence in Sustainable Tourism Education Network) group.