Dr Zafeirenia Brokalaki

Profile

Roles:

• Lecturer in Marketing and Communications
• Programme Director for MSc Marketing in the Creative Industries

Biography:

Zafeirenia Brokalaki is a cultural scholar working at the intersection of marketing and consumer research, cultural studies, and performance studies. She joined the School of Business and Management as Lecturer in Marketing in 2022 and currently acts as Programme Director for the MSc Marketing in the Creative Industries.

Prior to this, she held academic positions at King’s College London (Departments of Culture, Media and Creative Industries and Digital Humanities), the University of Leicester (School of Business), the University of Arkansas (Walton College of Business), and the University of Peloponnese (School of Theatre Studies).

Her broad research areas coalesce around the aesthetic, ethical, and political dimensions of art consumption, as well as the historical and transformative dynamics of the cultural market.

Zafeirenia holds a PhD in Culture, Media and Creative Industries from King’s College London, a PGCert in Philosophy (Hons) from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Cultural Policy and Management from the University of Warwick, an MA in Communication (Hons) from the American College of Greece, a BSc in Marketing and Communication from the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a BA in Dance, Choreography, and Dance Education from the Higher Professional Dance Academy of Greece (D. Gregoriadou).

She is Editor of Arts and the Market (Emerald) and serves on the Editorial Board of Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal (Emerald).

Zafeirenia is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA, Hons) and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).

Teaching

Postgraduate

Administrative responsibilities

• Programme Director for MSc Marketing in the Creative Industries

• Postgraduate Module Leadership

Research

Research Interests:

Zafeirenia’s research broadly explores the aesthetics, politics, and ethics of markets and consumption, with a distinct emphasis on the cultural sector. Her work concentrates on marketing and audience development in the cultural and creative industries (CCIs), as well as the dynamics of art consumption. Central to her inquiry are the concepts of participation and creativity, and their complex entanglement with market structures and logics, framed within a wider historical evolution of the arts market. Her scholarship further engages with questions surrounding creative epistemologies, storytelling, and dramaturgical approaches to marketing. More recently, her scholarly attention has expanded to the marketability of the body, laying the groundwork for a new project tracing the genealogy of the performing body on stage. Her forthcoming research agenda includes a critical investigation of cultural policies designed to support marketplace participation, accessibility, and justice - particularly within the performing arts and heritage as vital domains of the CCIs.

Interdisciplinary in nature, Zafeirenia’s research is primarily theory-driven, drawing on and integrating perspectives from philosophy, cultural studies, sociology and political studies, art history, and performance studies to contribute to theoretical development in marketing and consumer scholarship. In her empirical work, she adopts an interpretive/hermeneutic (qualitative) methodological approach to critically interrogate contemporary cultural marketplace phenomena and the evolution of market structures and transformations.

Her contributions align with and advance the progressive strands of interpretive, cultural, and critical marketing, and are situated in the nexus of scholarly traditions such as the Interpretive Consumer Research, Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), Transformative Consumer Research (TCR), Critical Marketing, Historical Marketing and Macromarketing. These streams collectively interrogate the normative foundations of market society and propose alternative imaginaries for organising markets and consumption. Looking ahead, Zafeirenia aims to foreground the philosophy of aesthetics and ethics in marketing and business research, pedagogy, and practice.

Her research has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Customer Behaviour, Journal of Creative Behaviour, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, City, Journal of Promotional Communications, as well as in edited marketing books.

She has presented her work at major academic conferences, including the Association for Consumer Research Conference (ACRC), the International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management (AIMAC), the Consumer Culture Theory Conference (CCTC), the European Marketing Academy Conference (EMAC), the Transformative Consumer Research Conference (TCR), the Academy of Marketing Conference (AM), the Gender, Markets and Consumer Conference (GENMAC), the Conference of Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), the Royal Geographical Society Conference (RGS), the Dance Studies Association Conference (CORD + SDHS), the Place Management and Branding Conference (IPBA), the International Visual and Performing Arts Conference (ATINER), the International Conference on Contemporary Marketing Issues (ICCMI), and the European Urban Research Association Conference (EURA), among others.

Zafeirenia is Editor of Arts and the Market (Emerald) and serves on the Editorial Board of Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal (Emerald). She also reviews for the Journal of Business Ethics, Social Enterprise Journal, The Arts Journal, Citizenship Studies, Sustainability, Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, and serves as a Trainee Reviewer for the Journal of Consumer Research.

Publications

• Brokalaki, Z. and Murray, J. B. (2025), “Participation in the arts market: A path towards transformation?”, Arts and the Market.
• Brokalaki, Z., (2025), “Coping with pain: Somatic rituals for high intensity spectacles”, in The Handbook of Rituals in Marketing, by Cele Otnes and Tina Lowrey, London: Routledge.
• Licsandru, T., Brokalaki, Z. and Elhoushy, S. (forthcoming), “Marketing for social justice”, in Managing and Leading for Social Justice, ed. by Patrick McGurk, London: Bristol University Press.
• Brokalaki, Z. (2024), “Virtue ethics in marketing: The art of crafting tragic brand stories”, Journal of Business Ethics.
• Howes, A., Brokalaki, Z., Sharifonnasabi, Z., & Licsandru, T. C. (2024), “Towards an understanding of domestic practice as commodified work”, Journal of Marketing Management, 40 (17-18), pp. 1529-1569.
• Brokalaki, Z. (2024), “Creativity in the ancient Greek philosophy: The politics of demiourgein”, Journal of Creative Behavior, 58, pp. 227-244.
• Brokalaki, Z. and Patsiaouras, G. (2021), “Commodifying ancient cultural heritage: The market evolution of the Parthenon Temple”, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 14 (1), pp. 4-23.
• Brokalaki, Z. and Comunian, R. (2021), “Beyond the hype. Art and the city in economic crisis”, City, 25 (3-4), pp. 396-418.
• Brokalaki, Z. and Murray, J. B. (2021), “Ethnographie créative et expériences culinaires: Exploration des pratiques alimentaires agréables”, Marketing Expérientiel Culinaire: Le Bien-être du Consommateur par le Plaisir Alimentair, Éditions Ellipse.
• Tsaousi, C., Cole-Wright, J. and Brokalaki, Z. (2021), “The Portrayal of old people in the media: A combination of content and critical discourse analysis of the portrayal of old people in the UK’s news stories”, Older People Wales Report.
• Lai, C. C. K., Patsiaouras, G. and Brokalaki, Z. (2020), “Tutors as brands: Exploring the celebrification of the Hong Kong shadow education sector”, Journal of Promotional Communications, 8 (1), pp. 125-144.
• Murray, J. B. and Brokalaki, Z. (2019), “Resistance”, Journal of Customer Behaviour, 18 (4), pp. 343-352.
• Brokalaki, Z. and Comunian, R. (2019), “Participatory cultural events and place attachment: A new path towards place branding?”, in Place Event Marketing: Promoting and Branding Urban Places, ed. by Waldemar Cudny, London: Routledge.
• Brokalaki, Z. and Murray, J. B. (2019), “Creative ethnography”, in Food and Experiential Marketing: Pleasure, Wellbeing and Consumption, by Wided Batat, London: Routledge.
• Murray, J. B., Brokalaki, Z., Bhogal-Nair, A., Cermin, A., Chelekis, J., Cocker, H. L., Eagar, T., McAlexander, B., Mitchell, N., Patrick, R., Robinson, T., Scholz, J., Thyroff, A., Zavala, M. and Zuniga, M., (2018), “Toward a processual theory of transformation”, Journal of Business Research, 100 (C), pp. 319-326.

Supervision

Public Engagement

Zafeirenia is an Impact Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), where she leads the research project Impact Stories in collaboration with creative enterprises based in East and South-East London.

She has previously contributed to a range of funded public engagement initiatives supported by universities, public bodies, and cultural organisations, including Nesta, Arts Council England (ACE), the Victoria and Albert Museum, CreativeWorks London, the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, UCL, King’s Cultural Institute, Tima Foundation, the University of Leicester, UL Innovation Hub, the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, and Queen Mary University of London.

In addition to her academic roles, Zafeirenia has served as a researcher, marketing consultant, and fundraiser for numerous cultural and non-profit organisations, social enterprises, charities, and creative SMEs in both the UK and Greece. Her collaborators have included Birmingham Royal Ballet, Dance Umbrella, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Opera Holland Park, East London Dance, the London School of Business and Finance, King’s College London, Emergency Exit Arts, Associated Studios, artfix London, Sinthesis Company, the Athens Fringe Network, the International Athens Film Festival, Rokka Festival, Demand for Supply, Metaxoto, and Paros Wind Festival, among others.