Dr Irena Ateljevic was born in Croatia, a former republic of Yugoslavia but left the country in the midst of its civil war at the age of 27, when she migrated to New Zealand in 1993. Soon after she began her doctoral studies and obtained her PhD in Human Geography in 1998 at the University of Auckland. Through the lenses of critical social theory she explored processes of tourism (neo)colonialisation of Aotearoa/New Zealand and its impacts on Maori indigenous people. During the 12 years she spent living in the country, she worked at Auckland University, Victoria University of Wellington and Auckland University of Technology and did numerous international research projects in Asia and South Pacific. In 2005, she moved to the Netherlands to teach at Wageningen University, a highly esteemed university for sustainability and nature conservation issues. She has been invited to teach and speak at various universities worldwide (from Brasil to Rwanda, Australia, Fiji islands, Thailand, China, Finland, the UK, etc.). In the current context of increasingly divided and unsustainable human living, her research passion lies in a critical praxis and action research that can bring the planet towards a more just and hopeful future. She began her academic career as a (post)modern critical theorist who pessimistically observed structural socio-spatial inequalities produced by the overarching Eurocentric, capitalist and patriarchical framework. Yet in the course of her progressive frustration of ‘only- marking-and-not-making-a-difference’ she has moved to the transmodern and transdisciplinary space of commitment to the hopeful scholarship and caring action that awakens the power of individual agency. Her top papers on that subject were published in scientific journals of Futures and Integral Review. Those theoretical ideas she has been translating into the areas of sustainable development, women’s empowerment, critical tourism and community studies, and transformative education; and in empirical terms into her own classroom as well as various action oriented projects in ‘peripheral’ communities of Croatia and India. She is one of the founders of the Critical Tourism Studies network dedicated to promoting the ‘academy of hope’ concept. She is the author/editor of 4 books and 3 special issues of scientific journals and over 50 refereed journal articles, invited essays and chapters in edited volumes. Irena’s international research endeavors carried her across different continents, spanning Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. She advised and developed social projects in Auroville, South India, led a multidisciplinary team of scholars on a collaborative study of the tourism-identity nexus in Yunnan Province, China, and studied the transformative role of tourism across Europe under the auspices of the UN World Tourism Organization with her Trans-Tourism project. Her tireless efforts have made significant contributions to sustainable tourism policies and strategies, including the National Tourism Plan and Strategy 2020 for the Republic of Croatia. Propelled by her resolve to translate theory into practice, Dr. Ateljević left her academic tenure in 2011, championing successful social-entrepreneurship projects such as Terra Meera, a hub for regeneration and human potential, Regenerate Europe, a multisectoral platform promoting the pan-European regeneration movement, SHE - Sibenik Hub for Ecology, a women-empowered initiative focused on local organic farming and establishment of a seed bank, and Phoenix Arbor, a center for human development and innovative action.