Griffith University!  Sometimes I feel as if it should be my home rather than a workplace. I've worked at Griffith as an associate lecturer since 1992. I completed my undergraduate degrees there, and I even lived on campus for five years, so in some weird illogical way it seems somewhat like home. Scary Thought Though!!!
I am presently working within the School of Marketing and Management which is on the Gold Coast Campus. I convene Intro to Marketing and Consumer Behaviour for full and part-time students. I have also completed my PhD within the area of international tourist behaviour. A popular topic for the Gold Coast Area! 
My research is investigating tourists'  perceptions of distance. I am especially interested in the large tourist market of the west coast of the United States and their perceptions of distance toward Australia and other competitive destinations such as Western Europe. I have attracted some press attention and granting monies with my research and have also been publishing papers throughout my PhD. My other research interests lie within the marketing and consumer behaviour within sports and leisure.

In 2000 I also completed a Graduate Diploma in Higher Education. The aim of this course was to update my knowledge about effective teaching methods in the higher education sector with a focus on promoting a quality learning environment. With the communication millennium here, I am especially interested in flexible learning in its many shapes and forms.
 

My Publications

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Harrison-Hill, Tracey (2001). How far is a long way? Contrasting two cultures' perspectives of travel distance, Asia-Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, special issue in Cross-cultural research.
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey. (2000). Investigating Cognitive Distance and Long Haul Destinations. Tourism Analysis, 5, 3-4, 83-90.
• Hill, Tracey and Shaw, R. (1995). Co-marketing Tourism Internationally: Bases for Strategic Alliances, Journal of Travel Research, 34, 1, 25-32.
  
  BOOK CHAPTER
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey (2001). Breaking The Rules: Cognitive Distance, Choice Sets And Long Haul Destinations in Consumer Psychology of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, Volume II.
  
  JOURNAL ARTICLES BY INVITATION
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey and Faulkner, W. (1998). The Tyranny of Distance: The Case of Australia's U.S. Market. The Australian International Business Review, December, 28-40.
  
  REFEREED CONFERENCE ARTICLES
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey (2000). The Implications Of Interviewer Accent On Research Design In Destination Evaluation Research in Proceedings of the Conference of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, June 11-14.
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey (1999). Howdy or G'day: Interviewer accents in cross-cultural research," in Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on Cross-Cultural Research.
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey (1999). How far is a long way? Contrasting two cultures' perspectives of travel distance, in Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on Cross-Cultural Research.
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey. (1998). The Tyranny of Distance: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Tourists' Perceptions, in the Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium on Cross-Cultural Consumer and Business Studies. December, pp. 371-376.
• Harrison-Hill, Tracey and Faulkner, Bill. (1998). The Tyranny of Distance: The Case of Australia's U.S. Market in the Proceedings of the 1998 Australian Tourism and Hospitality Research Conference. Vol.2, pp. 743-755.
• Hill, Tracey (1995). The Role of Long-Haul Air Travel in Destination Choice abstract in Proceedings of the 1995 National Conference on Tourism Research. BTR:Canberra.

As already mentioned, I am a cardiac scientist by trade which broadly means I do heart research for a living. I am based at the Heart Foundation Research Centre within the School of Health Science at Griffith University Gold Coast. We have approximately 10-12 people working in the centre ranging from senior investigators through post-docs to Ph.D / Honours and Research Assistants and students. Our laboratory is supported by the National Heart Foundation and through competitive grants. Heart disease is a bit like cancer, we will probably never cure it but we continue to do research which helps understand the causes and gives us ideas for treatments and how to better manage patients with heart problems. Heart disease is responsible for nearly 1/3 of all deaths in the industrialized world, as many as cancer and it costs our government many millions to treat heart patients, (they don't give much to heart research unfortunately, not to whinge of course). As you know the heart is an amazing organ, it is the only organ which does substantial work every minute of day, in fact it beats 100000 times a day and pumps 90000 litres of blood per 24 hours. If you would like to know more facts about your heart, how it works, what happens in heart disease as well as information of diets and healthy heart living have a look at the Australian Heart Foundation at or the American Heart Association site.

Our laboratory has a number of projects specifically looking at different aspects of the heart during normal and abnormal (disease) function. Some are listed below:

- the role of oxygen free radicals in heart during and after a heart attack

- the effects of aging on the heart

- understanding the genetic signals that make heart tissue unique, it is one of the only tissues which cannot repair itself after damage is done which is why so many people die from heart attacks

- we study the role of adenosine in improving the pumping efficiency of the heart during exercise and after a heart attack

- how the heart produces and regulates its energy supply and own blood flow is also of great interest to us.

As you can see we are looking at a lot of problems, we do not produce heart drugs as such but often test new compounds in our preparations to see their potential. Much of our research is focussing on the compound ADENOSINE, it is a naturally occuring substance in the heart and it has a lot of beneficial effects like dilating blood vessels to maximise flow, slowing the heart rate, improving the hearts use of oxygen, enhancing the pumping force of the heart. We have shown it is important during exercise and after coronary occulsion to maximise recovery of heart function. Unfortunately it does not last long in the blood so we cannot give it to heart patients but the drug design people are working on that problem.

To help us understand the human heart we have to use models that act just like our own heart, for this we have to use animal hearts for research (we do not get too many human volunteers with spare hearts for us, naturally human hearts removed at transplant are useful but are already sick and do not tell us much about normal heart function). The hearts we use are mice, rats and rabbit because they look and act just like our own mammalian hearts. We have many preparations to mimic the human heart, one is shown in the picture opposite, it is a isolated rat heart beating happily outside the body with no wires or magic, our hearts also do this after transplant!! So that is what I do, the other photo is one from an open day at the university where we do echocardiograms for the visitors, kids love to see their heart on TV. So my job is very interesting, frustrating sometimes but worthwhile I think because I can hopefully explain to anybody what I do in simple language. I have been lucky to travel to a lot of heart conferences around the world (NZ, Japan, Europe, Russia) and have worked in Amsterdam doing heart research from 1996-1998 (see my Holland travel pics). I will also be working with our collaborators in Virginia USA later this year for 2-3 months. Before I started my research career I worked in cardiac surgery at The Prince Charles Hospital as a perfusionist (heart-lung machine operator) so that has given me a lot of insight into heart disease from the clinical angle as well.

That is enough about my work, any questions you have please email me and I would be happy to answer them or put you in touch with those who could. If you would like to read my CV and the papers I have published during my research so far you can view it below…..

My Publications

Harrison GJ, van Wihje MH, de Groot B, Dijk FJ, van Beek JHGM. (1999) Creatine kinase inhibition accelerates transcytosolic energy signaling during rapid work load steps in isolated rabbit hearts. American Journal of Physiology 276 (1):H134-H140.

Rose'Meyer RB, Harden FA, Varela JI, Harrison GJ, Willis RJ (1999) Age-related changes to adenosine in rat coronary resistance vessels. General Pharmacology 32:35-40.

Harrison GJ, Willis RJ, Headrick JP (1998) Extracellular adenosine levels and cellular energy metabolism in ischemically preconditioned rat heart. Cardiovascular Research 40(1):74-87.

Harrison GJ, Harden FA, Jordan LR, Varela JI, Willis RJ (1996) A method to evaluate the response of the coronary circulation of perfused rat heart to adenosine. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 74(2):145-149.

Harden FA, Harrison GJ, Headrick JP, Jordan LR, Willis RJ (1996) A biphasic response to adenosine in the coronary vasculature of the potassium-arrested perfused rat heart. European Journal of Pharmacology 307(1):49-53.

Harrison GJ, Jordan LR, Selley ML, Willis RJ (1995) Low-density lipoproteins inhibit histamine and NaNO2 relaxations of the coronary vasculature and reduce contractile function in isolated rat hearts. Heart and Vessels 10(5): 249-257.

Harrison GJ, Jordan LR, Willis RJ (1994) Deleterious effects of hydrogen peroxide on the function and ultrastructure of cardiac muscle and the coronary vasculature of perfused rat hearts. Canadian Journal of Cardiology 10(8): 843-849.