DR. SARA LARA MARQUEZ-GALLARDO
Lecturer in Fashion Business and Technology, University of Manchester

I moved to the UK from Catalonia to study, and never quite left. What began as a fascination with the creative industries broadly; how they organise, who they exclude, what they're worth to the people inside them; narrowed, over time, into a specific curiosity about fashion: about style as a form of expression, and about who gets to own the meaning of it.

That question of ownership has stayed with me since my Master's at the University of Leeds, where I first started thinking seriously about the commons; creativity as something built collectively, and too often enclosed. It's the thread that runs through everything I've worked on since: my PhD research into how disruptive technologies reshape creative industries (book publishing, academic publishing, music), and now my work on AI, Web 3.0, and the cultural commons in fashion.

I was a Lecturer in Creative Industries at the School of Fashion & Textiles at De Montfort University in Leicester for several years before joining the Department of Materials at the University of Manchester, where I now research and lecture on fashion business and technology. Trying to understand, what it means to create and own something in an industry being reshaped by digital and algorithmic change.

Outside academic work, I write poetry, follow contemporary art closely, and spend a good deal of time on my bike.

Academic Posts

Currently: Lecturer in Fashion Business and Technology, University of Manchester, UK.

Lecturer in Creative Industries, School of Fashion & Textiles, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

Education

Bayes (Cass) Business School, UK
PhD in Management, 2018
Thesis: Disruptive technologies and institutional processes in the creative industries: Evidence from the fields of trade book publishing, academic publishing and music.
Committee: Prof. Davide Ravasi (UCL School of Management), Prof. Santi Furnari (Bayes Business School), Prof. Shaz Ansari (Cambridge Judge Business School)

Bayes Business School, UK
Master of Research (MRes), 2014

University of Leeds, UK
MA in Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship, 2010

Pompeu Fabra University, Spain (exchange at BI Norwegian Business School)
BSc in Management, 2008

Additional education
The History of Haute Couture, Central Saint Martins, London (2023)
Digital Marketing, Columbia Business School, NY (online, 2023)