Convenors: Dr Barbara Grabher (University of Brighton), Dr Willem Coetzee (University of Western Sydney), Dr Vasiliki Georgoula, (University of the Aegean)

Events are commonly studied within urban contexts, where they are embedded in dense cultural, economic, and social infrastructures. In contrast, events in rural settings—remote, peripheral, or insular—have received significantly less scholarly attention, often framed through deficit-based narratives. This session proposes a critical reconsideration of “rural events” by interrogating the very notion of rurality and its associated stigmas and inequalities. Rather than treating the rural as a simple spatial or demographic descriptor, we explore how rurality is socially constructed, negotiated, and contested, and how events offer a lens for reimagining these processes. 

Existing research on rural events frequently emphasises what rural areas “lack”—infrastructure, funding mechanisms, professionalization—risking the reproduction of simplistic stereotypes and overlooking the resilience and innovation exhibited by rural communities. At the same time, rural events are widely recognized as key social, cultural, and political infrastructures, strengthening community cohesion, generating belonging, and supporting local identity. Increasingly, they also intersect with tourism mobilities, becoming drivers of place marketing, economic diversification, and cultural commodification. This duality raises critical questions about how rural events navigate tensions between community-oriented values and tourism-driven agendas, and how such dynamics shape local identities, power relations, and social change. 

This session invites contributions that critically examine the complex relationality between events, rurality, community life, and tourism flows. By exploring events through their rurality, we aim to uncover how they sustain community cohesion while simultaneously responding to broader mobilities, demographic shifts, and development and cultural pressures. 

If you would like to present a paper, please send contact details and 250-word abstracts (including title, author affiliation, and contact details) to the convenors (b.grabher@brighton.ac.uk, v.georgoula@aegean.gr and w.coetzee@westernsydney.edu.au) by 26th February 2026.