Michelle Bovee

Michelle Bovée studied at James Madison University in Virginia, where she graduated with a BA in Political Science with a focus on international and comparative politics. She is currently attending the London School of Economics to get her Masters in International Relations. Michelle has been a Program and Research Intern with the SISGI Group since summer 2011, and is now a featured writer. She will post every fourth Monday on international economic development, the political and economic ramifications of the Arab Spring, and sustainable tourism.

Most commented posts

  1. Myanmar and the Politics of Tourism — 5 comments
  2. Voluntourism: the Good and the Bad — 4 comments
  3. Voluntourism Certification — 4 comments
  4. Responsible Tourism Reaches Egypt — 4 comments
  5. Abortion-Included Tours — 4 comments

Author's posts

Sep 16

Penang’s Economic Revivial

The state of Penang, Malaysia, has stumbled upon an interesting economic growth device: hospitals.  The region boasts numerous private hospitals and those hospitals draw an impressive number of medical tourists each year, which boosts Penang’s economy, as well as Malaysia’s as a whole.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, medical tourists are pretty …

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Sep 08

All About Greenwashing

I’ve written a few posts now where I’ve mentioned “greenwashing” (my post about Sandals, for example), but I realized I’ve never discussed what greenwashing is.  So, I’ve attached a helpful video that describes greenwashing and gives some tips on how to avoid falling for greenwashing traps when searching for sustainable products.  The video deals mainly …

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Sep 01

Ramadan: A Recap

In late July I wrote a post about Ramadan and how it might affect the Arab Spring nations; now that Ramadan is over, I thought it might be interesting to look back over what actually did happen.  In my post I wrote about the uncertainty surrounding the holy month this year: would the violence escalate …

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Aug 25

Microfinance Must Return to its Roots

Microfinance has become something of a buzzword in recent years (depending on which circles you run in), and the industry’s increase in popularity has also lead to an increase in criticism.  You may remember my last post about microfinance, as well as the posts written by my colleagues, but for those of you who don’t, …

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Aug 22

Voluntourism Certification

A few weeks ago Tourism Concern, a UK-based non-profit focused on ethical tourism and travel, announced that they will soon be launching Gap Year and International Volunteering Standard (GIVS).  GIVS is a voluntourism standardization program that will ensure that voluntourism companies are regulated and are a benefit to the destination communities.  As you may recall …

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Aug 15

Finding a New Use for Twitter in Egypt

Since Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt, some of the bloggers and activists who devoted their online time to organizing revolution have turned to a new use for social media: economic aid.  20 prominent Egyptian bloggers—the same ones who previously blogged about overthrowing Mubarak—have joined together to create a Twitter fundraising campaign, Tweetback.  The …

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Aug 11

Voluntourism: the Good and the Bad

On Tuesday afternoon I gave a webinar presentation on voluntourism, or volunteer tourism, and though it is now available on the SISGI Group Institute for Social Change website, I thought I would give a quick summary of it for those of you who couldn’t attend (or didn’t know about it).  Voluntourism is the combination of …

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Aug 08

Introducing the MIFFs

There’s a new kind of state (country states, not US states, just so we’re clear) emerging: MIFFs, Middle Income Failed-Fragile states.  These MIFFs are classified as middle-income states in the World Bank list of countries by income category, but they have highly unstable governments and a lot of conflict.  They are—or are close to being—failed …

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Aug 03

Responsibility to Protect and the Arab Spring

We all know that the no-fly zone and military action in Libya is ongoing, but what few people know is that the action was undertaken using the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and as such is fairly controversial.  The United Nations enacted Responsibility to Protect (RtoP or R2P) during the 2005 UN World Summit as a …

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Aug 01

Sandals Steps Up?

I have never understood the appeal of Sandals Resorts.  I’ve never been to one, so I can’t say for sure that my opinion is valid, but from the commercials they run it looks like all of the resorts are pretty much the same and are all the kind of all-inclusive, never-have-to-leave-the-resort facilities which never appealed …

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