Meet Giada Caivano and Lucrezia Gigante, finalists of the 2025 ENCATC Research Award
ENCATC is proud to announce the finalists for the ENCATC Research Award, the only international award recognising excellence in cultural policy and cultural management research.
The ENCATC Research Award in partnership with the Cultural Management Fund of the University of Antwerp is a yearly prize established in 2014 that recognizes exceptional doctoral/PhD research in the field of cultural management and policy. The international award jury evaluated the doctoral/PhD theses based on a variety of specific criteria, including quality of research and methodology, the international dimension of the research, relevance and impact and originality of the research topic.
The finalists of the 2025 Research Award are Giada Caivano, from the University of Barcelona, and Lucrezia Gigante, from the University of Leicester.
Giada Calvano was selected for her PhD thesis in “Greening European Music Festivals: Environmental Sustainability Strategies, Practices, and Certification from an Organisational Perspective“. This work explores the environmental sustainability strategies adopted by European music festivals, with a focus on how festivals design and implement greening practices from an organisational perspective.
Giada Calvano is the co-founder and CEO of Chloe Sustainability, a consultancy that supports cultural organisations in their transition towards sustainability. She has teaching experience in cultural management, sustainable events and festivals, and international cooperation at various universities and institutions, including University of Barcelona, Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan, and European Design Institute in Venice.
Lucrezia Gigante was selected for her PhD thesis in “The Spatial Politics of Art Organisations: Public Programmes as Sites of Cultural Citizenship“. Her work investigates the extent to which and how public programmes function as sites for socio-political belonging and agency in the (modern and contemporary) art museum, with the goal of re-examining the role of museums in creating cultures of belonging.
Lucrezia Gigante is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, with an interest in contemporary public culture and the politics of place-based cultural participation. Her interest focuses on the political agency and responsibility of cultural organisations in producing and reproducing ideas of place through their public programming. Besides her experience as a Research Assistant at the University of Leicester, she is Programme and Digital Communications Manager at the UNESCO Global Network of Water Museums.
The winner of this year's edition of the Research Award will be unveiled in the frame of the 2025 ENCATC Congress in Barcelona, Spain, during the Awards Ceremony of 15th September. Discover the full programme of the Ceremony and of the ENCATC Congress.