
Carolina Dalla Chiesa
Assistant Professor of Arts and Culture Studies
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Key interests:
Funding models for the arts
Cultural work in transformation
Careers and the "amateurization" of culture
Organizational formats and the commons governance
Carolina Dalla Chiesa (1987) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Arts and Culture (ESHCC/EUR). She is a cultural economist and cultural anthropologist.
Her research explores transformations in cultural markets post-digitalization, funding and financing models for the cultural sector, work in transition, and collective organizational models in and for the arts.
Carolina holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Culture Studies (Cultural Economics; 2021 - Erasmus University Rotterdam), an MSc. in Cultural Anthropology *cum laude* (2017 - UFRGS, Brazil), an MSc in Organization Studies (2014 - UFRGS, Brazil, Business School),.
Carolina also worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Culture and Sociology at Leuphana University at ISKO (2021-2022, Germany), researching the practices of digitally based creators.
She was awarded the Best Ph.D. Thesis Prize (2021) by the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Humanities (EGSH), and two best research paper prizes (2013 and 2014 - EnANPAD, Brazil).
Furthermore, Carolina worked temporarily as a Lecturer at the Brazilian "Escola de Administração" (UFRGS Business School).
Outside academia, Carolina worked as a Project Manager at the Creative Economy Observatory (OBEC), in partnership with the Ministry of Culture in Brazil (2014-2017), as well as an independent consultant in the non-profit sector for a brief period.
Her academic work has been published in several journals, including Poetics, Journal of Cultural Economics, Journal of Arts Management Law and Society, City Culture and Society, and International Small Business Journal, as well as in edited volumes and book chapters.
New edited volume publication (Open Access, 2026)
I've been recently involved in creating an interdisciplinary network of scholars interested in discussing the avenues for supporting artistic careers, cultural organizations and creative production, under what we call "Funding and Financing of the Arts" (F.A.N.), We are interested in finding theoretical and empirical avenues to advance the debate around new and traditional forms of arts support as well as their future challenges in post-digitized modern economies. See button below (under construction).
Carolina, 15.05.2026
