dr. IM (Izabela) Derda

Biography

Izabela Derda, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Media & Creative Industries at the Media & Communication Department.

Izabela is a media scholar whose research focuses on innovation in creative industries, with particular attention to how emerging technologies reshape co-creative practices and their dynamics. She approaches media as a practice embedded in networks of humans, organisations, and technologies. Her work engages closely with questions of human-centric digital transformation in cultural and creative sectors, with audience engagement as a key site where innovation acquires social relevance. She examines how data practices, AI-enabled tools, and digital infrastructures shape both organisational practice and the ways audiences are addressed, negotiated, and mobilised.

Currently, she is a co-lead of the Horizon Europe Innovation Action EXCENTRIC (€3.6M), which develops collaborative data ecosystems for cultural and creative sectors, enabling responsible and decentralised data sharing across organisations. In her research on audience engagement (Smartification of Audience Engagement), she combines qualitative inquiry with neuroscientific and computational methods to address persistent gaps between how engagement is defined – cognitively, emotionally, and behaviourally – and how it is measured and understood in practice. She co-leads the ERMeCHS research cluster Value in Creative Economy (ViCE), is a member SSH Sector Plan (Heritage & Identity) and a collaborating member of SSH-Breed Sectorplan themes on the Digitalization and platformization of work processes and products and Digitalisation, new ways of working, and the new employee.

Izabela is also a multi-award-winning media producer, advertising expert, and speaker. She has participated in numerous panels and served as a jury member at major advertising festivals worldwide, including Cannes Lions, Cristal Festival, Eurobest, and Clios Awards, among others.
Additionally, she served on the advisory board of the SXSW Pitch start-up competition (2022-2024).