Irene Tsitse is a PhD Candidate at ESHCC and started her research in the transformative potential of audience engagement and technology within the cultural and creative sectors and industries. Her primary focus is at the intersection of audience experiences, emerging technologies, and cultural entrepreneurship.
Irene's academic journey began with Marketing and Communication studies at Athens University of Economic and Business. During her studies, she went on an Erasmus+ Exchange to Tilburg University where she first encountered the term “Creative Entrepreneurship” as part of her minor in Entrepreneurship. This experience was a turning point, revealing to Irene that her two passions, business studies and the arts, could eventually be combined and that marked her career later on.
Firstly, she started her internship in marketing, as part of the same studies, at Athens Museum of Contemporary Arts (EMST) in 2020, which was quickly cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though times were tough, she got some good news: she was accepted into the Master’s program in Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship at Erasmus University Rotterdam. After completing her master's, Irene stayed in the Netherlands, and got a position as a Policy Trainee at Culture Action Europe in Brussels, a major European network of cultural networks, organisations, artists, activists, academics, and policymakers located in Brussels. During this position, she contributed to cultural policy research and advocacy related to the working conditions of the artists, EU’s National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) funding, and the freedom of artistic expression. Later, Irene worked at the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship as a Researcher for Startups & Scaleups. There, her responsibilities included quantitative and qualitative research in multiple entrepreneurial topics primarily in the fields of female leadership, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and academic entrepreneurship.
Currently, Irene is delving back into her passion for cultural economics, focusing on the cultural and creative sectors and industries (CCSIs). She views the CCSIs as crucibles of innovation, where artistic expression, cultural values, and economic considerations converge. Within this dynamic context, she believes understanding how audiences engage with cultural and creative works, especially those involving new technologies, is key to driving change. Therefore, her research seeks to uncover the mechanisms through which these engagements influence the overall landscape of the sectors by understanding the ways in which audiences actively participate and interact with cultural and creative offerings particularly those infused with technological innovation. Added to this, cultural entrepreneurship emerges as a key dimension of exploration, acknowledging that the CCSIs are not only arenas for artistic expression but also ecosystems where entrepreneurial endeavours can contribute to sustainable growth. Essentially, Irene's research is dedicated to uncovering how audience interaction, digital innovations, and entrepreneurial approaches are reshaping the CCSIs, aiming to contribute, even in a tiny bit, to their ongoing development.
- Researcher