Staff Profiles

My research interests lie in the field of urban and tourism history, especially the history of Central European spa towns and health tourism from the eighteenth-century up to the First World War. Some of my publications have dealt with the role of visual culture and the media, for example, postcards and travel journalism in promoting tourism and the production and performance of place and identities. Recent work has been concerned with the role of the spa towns in the production of European leisure culture and cultural transmission. 

Main interests are: tourism history, particularly that of health tourism in Central Europe; the history of spa towns and urban tourism.

• Steward J. The role of inland spas as sites of transnational cultural exchange in the production of European leisure culture (1750-1870). In: Borsay,P; Furneé,J-H, ed. Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe c.1700-1870: A Transnational Perspective. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016, pp.224-259.
• Steward J. On the Continong’: Britons abroad and the ‘business of travel’: 1820-. In: M. Farr, X. Guégan, ed. From the Grand Tour to Mass Tourism: A Modern History of the British Abroad. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013.
• Steward JR. Moral economies and commercial imperatives; food, diets and spas in central Europe: 1800-1914. Journal of Tourism History (Special Issue: International Histories of Mineral springs Resorts: The Mondariz Balneario Symposium of 2011, Part 2) 2012, 4(2), 181-203.
• Steward J. The Affective Life of the Spa. In: Picard, D., Robinson, M, ed. Emotion in Motion: The Passion of Tourism, Travel and Movement. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, pp.211-230.
• Steward J. Travel to the spas: the growth of health tourism in Central Europe. In: Blackshaw,G., Wieber, S, ed. Journeys into Madness: Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. New York: Oxford: Berghahn, 2012, pp.72-89.
• Steward J. Food and exhibitions: cultural and culinary encounters in exhibitions before 1914. In: Food and Meals at Cultural Crossroads 2010). 2010, Oslo: Novus Folksmuseet.
• Steward J. The attractions of place: the making of urban tourism: 1860-1914. In: Hessler,M; Zimmermann,C (Frankfurt/Amsterdam/New York: Campus), ed. Creative Urban Milieus: Historical Perspectives on Culture, Economy and the City. Frankfurt/Amsterdam/New York: Campus, 2008, pp.255-284.
• Steward J. 'The Balkans in London': political culture and the cultural politics of exhibitions at Earl's Court, 1906-1908. Études Balkaniques 2008, 44(4), 64-89.
• Cowan A, Steward J, ed. The City and the Senses: Urban Culture since 1500. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.