Katie Kurtessis
Valene Smith Winner 2013 – First Place

Katie Kurtessis is a M.A student of cultural anthropology at SUNY Albany. She graduated in 2011 with a B.A in International Relations and a B.A in Spanish from Roanoke College in Virginia before moving to Piura, Peru for a year to teach and research at the Universidad de Piura. The research she collected in Piura suggests that the pre-existing social relationship and perceptions between the host community and the tourist will determine the ability for tourism to develop. She hopes to pursue these findings further to understand how prior political conflict will affect the type of tourism that can be developed. The overall basis for her research is community-based tourism as an alternative to economic development in the neoliberal world. She will complete fieldwork for her master's thesis this summer in southern Nicaragua with a goal of creating a model for tourism that is socially and economically sustainable for the community.

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Nicolas Rasiulis
Valene Smith Winner 2013 – Honorable Mention

I grew up in Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, but my Québécois roots brought me frequently into ‘la Belle Province’. As a teenager, I became genuinely myself along canoe expeditions with a non-profit summer camp in Quebec. My genuine self transformed the way in which I live in both bio-diverse and anthropo-emphatic places. I live always in Nature, the living world, and feel the landscape with empathetic attunement of perceptual awareness.

I have been guiding teens along expeditions since I was seventeen years old. During the months of July and August, 2012, I conducted autoethnographic fieldwork along a twenty-seven day canoe expedition in Quebec. I am currently completing an undergraduate honours in sociocultural anthropology. In September, 2013, I begin my masters at the University of Ottawa, with which I will further explore canoe-camping’s transformative features and potentials.