The visiting researcher program strengthens the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity's global reach and research quality

The Hamrin Foundation Visiting Researcher Program is a 3-year program that supports the establishment and internationalization of the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity. It enables the centre to invite visiting researchers for shorter amounts of time to help build theresearch foundation of the centre, support the centre’s junior scholars, and strengthen the publication- and application processes that runs at the centre. Visits in 2024 ar Dr. Vittoria Magrelli, the Free University of Bolzano, and Prof. Damian O’Doherty, School of Management, University of Liverpool. Visitors in 2025 include Prof. Roberto Verganti, Stockholm School of Economics.

The Hamrin Foundation also part-funds a PostDoc position at the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity. This PostDoc is focusing on joining other at the centre in studying the Lund University Digital Interactive Concert Hall (LUDICH). The LUDICH project is an innovation project involving six faculties at Lund University together with several external partners (such as Axis Communication, Amazon Web Services, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Cinfo, CapGemini, Future by Lund, Malmö Live Concert Hall). The PostDoc is also, apart from this study, studying audience agency in AI – human co-creation in the context of digital, interactive concerts. Special focus is on opera as a potentially humanizing art, on embodied creativity, human-machine emotional interaction, affective coordination, and sensory forms of intelligence.

About the researcher 

Daniel Hjorth (Dr.) is the Ulf G. Lindén Professor of Aesthetics and Business Creativity and Professor of Business Administration with focus on Organization, at Lund University School of Economics and Management, and Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization at the Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School, and Adjunct Professor at Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University. Hjorth is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Financial Times top 50-listed journal Organization Studies, and has published books and papers on the organizational conditions for creativity, philosophy and management, art and business, and entrepreneurship. His latest book, written with Prof. Robin Holt, is Entrepreneurship and the Creation of Organization (paperback in 2024). In the autumn 2024, Hjorth opened the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity at Lund University, with support from Lindéngruppen, The Hamrin Foundation, and Åsa and Jan Söderberg.

"The Hamrin Foundation shares the vision for future of business research and education that is built on a richer ‘conversation’ between aesthetics, ethics, and economy" says Professor Hjorth. "The establishment of the Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity is enabled partly through support from The Hamrin Foundation. The big advantage we benefit from by working with The Hamrin Foundation is the closeness, flexibility and speed with which we can collaborate. We have a living dialogue with the foundation and are able to discuss more directly and involve them in our visions and plans for the future develoopment of the centre. This ‘dialogical’ relationship is rather unique in the world of research funding and support. It is definitely a competitive advantage of The Hamrin Foundation if described in business terms, and a relational asset for the centre and me personally when figuring out how to actualize ideas for creating new possibilities for exciting research and education moving ahead."