Lucy Costelloe

Overview

Dr Lucy Costelloe is Lecturer in Marketing and Communications in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries. She is a scholar-practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of arts management, marketing, and cultural policy, with a particular focus on data-driven practices in the non-profit arts and creative sector.

Her research examines how data, metrics and digital infrastructures are embedded in the everyday practices of arts organisations, and how these arrangements shape valuation, decision-making and the negotiation of mission-driven and market-oriented imperatives. Drawing on market studies, science and technology studies, and cultural policy research, this work approaches data as practice, emphasising the socio-technical configurations through which value is produced, contested and sustained in hybrid cultural markets.

This agenda is developed in her doctoral research, Concerning Metrics: Convening Hybrid Forums to Explore the Intersection of Mission and Data Practices in the Non-Profit Arts Sector (University of Limerick, 2025), which advances an interventionist methodology using hybrid forums to bring together researchers, practitioners and sector stakeholders around shared concerns relating to digitalisation and valuation. Her published work also includes contributions on data-driven innovation in the creative sector and policy responses to crisis, including co-authored research on the impact of Covid-19 on the arts in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Alongside her academic work, she brings extensive professional experience from the digital technology and SaaS sector, having held senior roles in arts and cultural technology organisations with responsibility for marketing, strategy and sector engagement. She continues to work as a consultant and advisor with arts organisations and creative enterprises. She is a Board Director of the Ulster Orchestra, where she contributes to governance and strategic discussions relating to digital development, marketing and equality, diversity and inclusion.

Publications

Costelloe, L. (2025). Concerning metrics: convening hybrid forums to explore the intersection of mission and data practices in the non-profit arts sector. Doctoral dissertation, University of Limerick.

Costelloe, L. (2025). Book Review: Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (Terras, Jones, Osborne and Speed). Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, 11(1), 28–33.

O’Brien, M. and Costelloe, L. (2021). A response to the Covid-19 crisis for the arts in Ireland and impact of the coronavirus on the Northern Ireland arts sector. Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, 8 (2020–21), 63–77.