**Erik Hitters is Associate Professor of Media and Creative Industries in the Department of Media & Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam.** He has co-founded and is managing director of ERMeCC, the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture. Erik’s research interests lie in the broad field of transformations in the media and cultural industries. His first strand of research deals with the changing logics of institutional and field dynamics in the media and cultural industries, including the film, music and broadcasting industries. His second interest is in local, regional and national creative industries policies. His third in media clustering and creative cities. He leads two large research projects. The first is the NWO funded Creative Industries Strategic Research Project “Cultures of Innovation in the Creative Industries”. The second is the Smart Culture Strategic Research Project “Staging popular music: sustainable live music ecologies for artists, music venues and cities (POPLIVE)”, jointly funded by NWO and SIA.

Erik Hitters was trained as a sociologist at Tilburg University. He received his doctorate in Social Sciences from Utrecht University in 1996. In 1997 he was a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Prior to his present job at the Media & Communication Department of Erasmus University, he worked as lecturer and assistant professor at the universities of Nijmegen and Tilburg and as a senior researcher at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University. He served as Chair of the Examination Board and Director of Education a.i. of the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. He lectures for IBCOM, the International BA in Media & Communication and the MA Media Studies, where he is the academic coordinator of the Media & Creative Industries specialisation.