Professor Danny O’Brien
IAS Residential Fellow
Bond University
Danny O’Brien is a Professor and Director, Higher Degree Research, at Bond Business School, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. He is a graduate of Australian Catholic University; California State University, Long Beach; and, De Montfort University, England. Danny teaches in the areas of event management, surf industry studies and international sport business.
His primary research interest is in sustainable surf tourism and its ability to contribute to community capacity building, particularly in developing countries. His other research interests explore event leverage, and strategic management in sport. Each of Danny’s research areas shares a common sport-for-development thread and the aim to assist stakeholders in realising community building outcomes through sport.
Danny has completed research projects for World Rugby, the Australian Federal Government, and sat on the Queensland State Government's "Embracing 2018 Evaluation and Monitoring Working Group" charged with developing a framework for monitoring and evaluating legacies derived from the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Danny’s work appears in top-tier journals like Journal of Sport Management; Sport Management Review; European Journal of Marketing; Annals of Tourism Research; Journal of Sustainable Tourism and others. He is a former Associate Editor of Sport Management Review, and currently sits on the Editorial Boards of Sport Management Review, Event Management and Journal of Sport & Tourism. Danny is a Visiting Professor in the Center for Surf Research at San Diego State University, United States; and also at Plymouth Sustainability and Surfing Research Group, Plymouth, United Kingdom.
During their IAS Fellowship, Professor O’Brien is collaborating with Dr Mathew Dowling from the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.