Meet our lecturing staff
Dr Ziene Mottiar
Senior Lecturer
Email: Ziene.Mottiar@TUDublin.ie
Tel: +353 (0)1-220 5802
Dr. Ziene Mottiar is a researcher and senior lecturer in the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism. She is programme chair for TU956 BSc (Hons) Tourism Management and TU957 BSc (Hons) Hospitality Management, manages the undergraduate and postgraduate theses process and lectures on a variety of modules including Entrepreneurship, Globalisation and Tourism, Food Tourism and Current Tourism Research.
She is an active researcher with more than 30 peer reviewed articles in journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. She has also been involved in a number of funded research projects. Her key areas of research interest are Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, local development, circular economy, global citizenship and teaching and learning. She is currently supervising PhD students on topics such as social enterprise, the circular economy and food tourism, and is an experienced PhD examiner.
Ziene is also interested in educational research and was a co-investigator on the Next Tourism Generation Erasmus funded project (€4m). In 2025 she was awarded the status of Fellow from Advance HE, in 2020 she won a national Teaching Hero award (voted by students) and in 2018 was part of the team that won the National Forum for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (DELTA) award as part of the Students in Action project. She has also been awarded a number of Teaching Fellowships, the most recent in the area of Assessment and Feedback.
Research interests:
- Entrepreneurship (in particular tourism entrepreneurs).
- Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurs.
- Circular economy.
- Global citizenship.
- Local and regional development.
- Food Tourism.
- Innovation.
- Teaching and Learning.
Recent research projects:
- 2020-2024 Awarded funding for a PhD studentship in Social Enterprise
- 2017-2019 Assessment and Feedback Teaching Fellowship (LEAF) – Principal Investigator
- 2017-2021 Erasmus + Sectors Skills Development Next Tourism Generation (€4million)
- 2017 Awarded CoAT funding for PhD scholarship in Coastal Tourism
- 2016 Awarded Seed funding for Turning Assessment Feedback into Action
- 2016 Awarded Fiorsaigh Funding for PhD student in food tourism
Publications:
Mottiar, Z (in press) Social Entrepreneurs: an important, but often overlooked, type of tourism entrepreneur, Altinay, L, Farmaki, A and Alrawadieh, Z Entrepreneurship in Hospitality and Tourism: A Global Perspective. Goodfellow.
Mottiar, Z., & Ryan, T. (2024). Events, transformation and global citizenship. In Sustainable Events Management (pp. 168-178). CABI International.
Mottiar, Z and MacConiomaire, M (2024) "The Individual, Collective, and Cyclical Transformational Learning Created by Food Tourism Education," European Journal of Food Drink and Society: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ejfds/vol4/iss1/3
O’Reilly, C, Walsh, L and Mottiar, Z (2023) Considerations for scaling a social enterprise: key factors and elements. Irish Journal of Management Vol 42 Is 1
Kelliher, F, Hynes, B and Mottiar, Z (2023) Building a better tomorrow – bridging the disconnect between policy, practice, education and research in social enterprise. Editorial for Special Issue Irish Journal of Management Vol. 42 Is 1 https://doi.org/10.2478/ijm-2023-0006