David Beirman is a senior lecturer in the Management Discipline Group specialising in tourism. He completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees majoring in Sociology at the University of NSW. David has had an extensive career in the Australian travel industry between 1981-2009 which encompassed work with retail travel agencies, wholesale tour operators, destination marketing organisations and management, human resource management and in-service industry training. Prior to joining UTS as a full-time lecturer David had developed tourism courses and lectured part-time at UTS and other universities in tourism, marketing, Middle East studies and sociology.

His specialist areas of research are tourism risk, crisis and recovery management and destination marketing. He has been widely published in these fields. He has been invited as a keynote speaker in conferences all over the world and has provided crisis and recovery management consultation to governments and tourism businesses in Australia, Asia, Africa and North America. David is the co - chair of the CAUTHE (Council of Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Educators) tourism risk, crisis and recovery special interest group He was the founder and National Secretary of the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association 2000-2012, an industry association which promoted fifteen countries between Italy and Jordan. David is also a member of the Consular Consultative Group which is a travel industry and stakeholder leadership body appointed by Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to consult with DFAT on the issue of government travel advisories and tourism safety and security. David is a board member of Australian Travel Careers Council (the peak national body which approves travel career based training and education standards).