Biography
Nicky van Es (1988) is a PhD candidate in the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture (ERMeCC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, on the NWO-funded project entitled: Locating Imagination: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Literary, Film and Music Tourism (supervised by dr. Stijn Reijnders).
Nicky studied Sociology (BA) and recently finished his Research Master Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts (MA) in the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSW) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His BA thesis focused on deconstructing the relation between income inequality and mental health issues in developed countries, through comparison with the macro-level effects of neo-liberalistic sentiments and cultural insecurity (anomie) on mental well-being during the past decades.
His MA thesis revolved around problematizing the underlying assumption in the contemporary debate of online video-games that national identity and nationality are increasingly less tenable dispositions in the virtual worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG’s), in favor of a more ‘culturally open’ (or: cosmopolitan) disposition. Taking the immensely popular MMORPG, The World of Warcraft (WoW), and its European player-base as a case-study, the results have shown that national identity and instances of nationalism remain salient within the game itself on multiple levels, and prove to be a heated topic of debate within the European WoW-community.
In 2013 Nicky began his sub-project on literary tourism, to investigate how contemporary popular literature feeds the imagination of tourists and subsequently literally move them across geographical borders to visit the places central to the novels they’ve read. In addition to these underlying meanings which are ascribed to this practice by the tourists themselves, attention will be paid to local authorities, residents, tourist agencies and other organizations who are involved in creating and maintaining a ‘literary experience’ of places in Europe.
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication
- vanes@eshcc.eur.nl
More information
Work
- Nicky van Es, Stijn Reijnders, Leonieke Bolderman & A Waysdorf (2021) - Locating Imagination in Popular Culture: Place, Tourism and Belonging - doi: 10.4324/9781003045359
- Stijn Reijnders, Abby Waysdorf, L Bolderman & Nicky van Es (2020) - Introduction: Locating Imagination in popular culture: place, tourism and belonging - doi: 10.4324/9781003045359-1
- Nicky van Es & Stijn Reijnders (2016) - Making sense of capital crime cities: Getting underneath the urban facade on crime-detective fiction tours - European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21 (4), 502-520 - doi: 10.1177/1367549416656855 - [link]
- Nicky van Es & Stijn Reijnders (2016) - Chasing sleuths and unravelling the metropolis: Analyzing the tourist experience of Sherlock Holmes' London, Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles and Lisbeth Salander's Stockholm - Annals of Tourism Research, 57, 113-125 - doi: 10.1016/j.annals.2015.11.017 - [link]
- Nicky van Es & Johan Heilbron (2015) - Fiction from the Periphery: How Dutch Writers enter the Field of English-language Literature - Cultural Sociology (print), 9 (3), 296-319 - doi: 10.1177/1749975515576940
- Johan Heilbron & Nicky van Es (2015) - In de wereldrepubliek der letteren
- Nicky van Es (2015) - Recensie themanummer Spiegel der Letteren (2014; vol. 56 (3), p. 243-419): Literaire Fancultuur in Nederland. - Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 135
- Stijn Reijnders, Leonieke Bolderman, Nicky van Es & Abby Waysdorf (2015) - Research note: locating imagination - Tourism Analysis, 20 (3), 333-341 - [link]
- Nicky van Es & Stijn Reijnders (2014) - Chasing Sleuths and Unravelling the Mysterious Metropolis. On Tourist Experiences of the Crime-detective Fiction City.
- Nicky van Es (2014) - ‘Capital Crime Cities’: Chasing Sleuths and Locating the Unknown in the Criminal and Mysterious Metropolis.
Cultural Sociology of Tourism
- Level
- MA
- Year Level
- MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CC4201
Master Thesis Class TCS
- Level
- MA
- Year Level
- MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CC4206
Master Thesis TCS
- Level
- MA
- Year Level
- MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CC4250
Media Tourism
- Year Level
- MA, MA, MA-1, Pre-master, MA
- Year
- 2024
- Course Code
- CC4015