Meet our Research Staff

Vanessa Santos

Postdoctoral Researcher

Vanessa Santos is an artist-researcher whose work bridges creativity, tourism, and sustainability. With over 20 years of experience as a creative entrepreneur, she has a background in theatre and circus and has co-founded ventures across several countries in eco-design, jazz, food tourism, culinary placemaking, and culinary heritage diplomacy, contributing to projects that supported marginalized groups facing barriers to social and economic inclusion through diverse forms of intangible culture, as tools for empowerment and connection.

In 2019, Vanessa transitioned into research through her work on Portugal’s CREATOUR project, where she facilitated stakeholder networking sessions and produced video documentaries that highlighted a range of community perspectives. During her PhD, she contributed to the SmartCulTour project by co-developing arts-based and service design tools. Her work included cultural mapping workshops in the Scheldeland Living Lab in Belgium, aimed at co-creating sustainable cultural tourism strategies. Her doctoral dissertation was delivered in the creative format of autoethnotheatre, and explored creativity as a process for sustainable tourism development, focusing on the creative cities of the Centro Region of Portugal.

Drawing on her rich practical background, she engages in participatory action research, where lived experience and collaborative practice inform theoretical development. She is passionate about fostering human-centered, experimental, and context-sensitive approaches to policymaking, balancing economic resilience with social equity.

As an educator, Vanessa has taught courses in creative qualitative research, culture, and tourism, and co-founded KU Leuven’s HERKUL Institute and the Cultural Tourism Lab, both dedicated to advancing living heritage practices.

Vanessa’s desk is in Park House and she looks forward to meeting colleagues in due course.