DrClaudia Escobar Vega

Dr Claudia Escobar Vega is an international researcher, practitioner, educator, and arts and cultural leader. Claudia is a Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management at Deakin Business School, where her teaching is informed by extensive professional experience across arts management, cultural leadership, community-engaged practice, events, creative industries, and cross-sector collaboration.

Her line of research explores how children and young people develop beliefs about leadership, participation, influence, and their capacity to create positive change. Her interdisciplinary approach brings together childhood development, leadership, education, arts and cultural management, participatory practice, and emerging technologies.

Claudia's research has been published in leading international journals, including Psychological Review, the Journal of Constructivist Psychology, the Journal of Management & Organization, and BMC Psychiatry. Her reconceptualisation of how understandings of leadership develop was published in Psychological Review, one of the world's leading psychology journals, and her doctoral research received the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management's Best Doctoral Dissertation — Commendation of Merit Award. She has also reviewed for Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science and a member of the Financial Times FT50 journal list, reflecting recognition of her interdisciplinary expertise across psychological and management research.

Claudia is the founder and lead of Children & Leadership Futures, an interdisciplinary research and public-engagement initiative investigating how children's ideas about leadership develop and how education, culture, creative practice, and emerging technologies can broaden their sense of possibility. Through the initiative, she translates research into educational resources, public conversations, podcasts, creative projects, and collaborations with schools, educators, families, and communities.

Across more than 20 years, Claudia's research, educational, participatory arts, and public-engagement initiatives have involved more than 1,600 children and young people across Colombia, Australia, Afghanistan, and Italy. This extensive experience has shaped a distinctive programme of work examining how children understand who can contribute, whose ideas are valued, who has opportunities to influence others, and how more inclusive possibilities can be fostered through education, culture, and creative participation.

A major outcome of this work was the Leaders Exhibition, a large-scale participatory research and arts initiative bringing together more than 900 children's drawings about leadership. By bringing research findings together with children's creative contributions, the exhibition challenged narrow stereotypes about leadership and demonstrated how arts-based practice can make children's perspectives visible within wider cultural and public conversations.

Her work has also reached audiences beyond academia, featured on ABC TV News, ABC Radio National's Life Matters and Breakfast, and at The Wheeler Centre, contributing to national conversations about children, leadership, inclusion, and the future of education.

Alongside her research on children and leadership, she contributes to Deakin's Audience Diversification research initiative, partnering with arts and cultural organisations to develop more inclusive approaches to audience engagement, participation, and organisational change.

As Deakin Business School's Cogniti Champion, Claudia leads the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of AI-supported learning initiatives that strengthen reflection, collaboration, and the ethical, educationally meaningful use of generative AI in higher education. She also supervises doctoral research on how understandings of leadership develop during adolescence, and contributes to Deakin's Child Safety Community of Practice.

Before entering academia, Claudia built an international career as an arts manager and practitioner, consultant, and board member — leading strategic partnerships, cultural programmes, community initiatives, and major events across the arts, education, creative industries, government, community, and corporate sectors. This professional foundation continues to shape her research and teaching, and underpins her commitment to moving discovery into practice through meaningful collaboration with children, educators, cultural organisations, and communities.

Her contributions have been recognised through awards and fellowships including the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship, the Australian Government's Distinguished Talent Permanent Residency, and Colombia's Art and Youth for Peace Award.

Her work is united by one central question: how do children come to believe they can make a difference?