Caroline Marcuzzi

With a bachelor's degree in hospitality management and a Master's degree in Sciences et Gestion du Tourisme, Caroline worked for several years in the hotel and catering sector, which influenced her view of the realities of hotel work. Since 2020, she has been a doctoral candidate at BCTS, where she has been conducting research into emotional labour in the upmarket hotel industry in French-speaking Belgium. At the same time, as a Teaching Assistant, she is responsible for a wide range of teaching-related tasks in two Master’s programmes: the Master in ‘Sciences et Gestion de l’Environnement’ and the Master’s in ‘Sciences et Gestion du Tourisme’.

Her doctoral research focuses on emotional labour in the upmarket hotel sector (4* and 5*) in French-speaking Belgium. It is part of an interdisciplinary perspective combining sociology of work, gender studies and sociology of emotions. The main objective is to examine the extent to which the emotional demands associated with hotel service jobs can vary according to the gender of the employees.

Using a qualitative approach based on content analysis of job advertisements and interviews with hotel staff, the research aims to gain a better understanding of the place occupied by emotional labour in the day-to-day operations of these organisations: how it is distributed, perceived and valued. It also seeks to identify the professional norms, whether explicit or implicit, that provide a framework for expected emotional behaviour, and to examine any gendered differences in these expectations.

The PhD thesis is part of a wider personal research interest in working conditions, recognition of work and inequalities in hospitality.

As a Teaching Assistant, she devotes half her time to teaching-related tasks. In particular, she supervises students’ internships, Master’s theses and partaking in mobility programmes. She also lectures in two courses of the Master’s in Sciences et gestion du tourisme: Project management and the fundamentals of the scientific approach.