Mariangela Lavanga is Associate Professor (with ius promovendi) of Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship at the Dept. Arts and Culture Studies at ESHCC, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is the co-founder and academic coordinator of the Minor Fashion Industry (established in a.y. 2016-17 as first interdepartmental and first academic minor on fashion in the Netherlands) and the Master specialisation Fashion Transition. She was the Academic Lead on Fashion Sustainability Transition at the Design Impact Transition (DIT) platform, part of the Erasmus University ‘Strategy 2024’ in the period 2021-2025. Mariangela was also the Academic Coordinator, Head of the Admission Team, Master Theses Coordinator of the MA in Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship (consistentely ranked among the top-5 Masters in cultural management/creative industries in the world) in the period 2018-2025.

Mariangela is the ESHCC Thought Leader Sustainability. In this role, she was involved in the EUR faculty wide Sustainability Dialogues and she is member of the jury for the ESHCC Engagement/Societal Impact Award since 2024. She researches and lectures on cultural and creative industries and sustainable urban development with active stakeholders’ engagement. In particular, she focuses on the sustainability transition in the fashion and textiles industry, and she enjoys using fashion as a field to engage with transdisciplinary and transformative academic work.

She is PI and WP co-lead in the Horizon Europe project ‘FABRIX - Fostering local, beautiful, and sustainably designed regenerative textile & clothing ecosystems’ with Rotterdam and Athens as case studies. FABRIX adopts a human-centred approach to digital and industrial technologies with an eye for spatial dynamics in a way that would include a more localised and socially inclusive regenerative and innovative manufacturing sector. Mariangela was also PI and co-led the Convergence Resilient Delta project ‘Towards Textile-form Futures’ which focused on on-demand and local production of circular textile-form systems, such as integrated circular micro-factories. In 2018-20 she co-led and managed the European project RE-FRAME FASHION, supported under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Programme of the European Union and evaluated as very good / best practice.

Mariangela is the Promotor of four PhD candidates working on the topics of sustainability and innovation hubs in fashion and textiles, sustainable fashion communication, art biennials and decolonial praxis, and the business history and internationalisation of the German fashion industry at ESHCC. Furthermore, she is the external member of the Individual PhD Committee (IPC) of a PhD candidate working on the topic of sustainable transitions in European Fashion (M)SMEs at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Mariangela was the co-promotor of two PhD candidates on sustainable urban tourism and a value-based approach to cities at ESHCC, the daily supervisor of two PhD candidates at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and the supervisor of five visiting international PhD candidates working on a broad range of cultural and creative industries from cultural economics and entrepreneurship perspectives. 

Mariangela is keynote speaker and guest lecturer in many universities in The Netherlands and abroad, and she is often invited to take part in (inter)national PhD committees (i.e. Erasmus University Rotterdam, Radboud Universiteit, University of Antwerp, Polytechnic University Milan, La Statale University of Milan, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria). 

Mariangela has an international and interdisciplinary background. Before joining the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication / Erasmus University Rotterdam, she worked at University of Amsterdam (UvA), IULM University in Milan, Cattolica University in Brescia, and the European Institute for Comparative Urban Research (EURICUR) at the Faculty of Economics / Erasmus University Rotterdam. Mariangela holds a PhD in Communication Economics / Cultural Economics (IULM University, Milan), a MSc in Urban Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and a BSc/MSc in Economics (Bocconi University, Milan).

Read about the transition to just fashion in Erasmus Extra & in our latest magazine Just Fashion Transition or watch the episode of Erasmus University Rotterdam - Impact In Sight on Sustainability and Fashion where we discuss the Minor Fashion Industry. 

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Always feel free to drop me an email if you want to explore opportunities for collaboration!