Dr

Lorenzo

Biferale

(he/him)

Lorenzo is an applied economist specialising in cultural economics and cultural policy. He is Research Associate in Creative Industries at the University of Sheffield, within the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC), and Head of Research at KEA European Affairs in Brussels. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography and Regional Science from the Gran Sasso Science Institute, and BSc and MSc degrees in the economics and management of arts and culture from Bocconi University. He has been a visiting researcher at King's College London and a Research Fellow at Sony Computer Science Laboratories. At KEA he coordinates European Commission–funded research on cultural policy, impact assessment and the public value of culture. His research looks at the spatial dimensions of cultural participation and how they relate to social, economic and environmental outcomes.
His main area of expertise is the spatial dimension of cultural phenomena and their economic, social and behavioural effects on socio-economic systems. He studies these mainly through quantitative methods that combine econometrics with non-traditional data sources. His academic work has been published in top-tier international peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Cultural Economics, Cities and many others.
Alongside his research, Lorenzo has more than ten years of experience as a cultural practitioner and organiser. In 2014 he founded Quindici19, a volunteer-run grassroots cultural organisation with a team of ten. Since then, the organisation has raised over €500,000 and reached more than 5,000 young creatives from around the world. Its programmes focus on conflict transformation, care, and re-humanising cultural spaces through creative activism, including the international film festival and residency Duemila30. Lorenzo works to bring these two sides of his work together. He sees research and practice as mutually reinforcing ways of exploring the world, both driven by the same curiosity.