Prof. Dr. Malaika Brengman

Professor Dr. Malaika Brengman (1973) has obtained her master’s degree in Applied Economic Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she joined the Department of Business Economics as marketing research and teaching assistant. In the meantime, she obtained a postgraduate degree in Marketing & Advertising from the Solvay Business School (ULB) and obtained a PhD in Applied Economic Sciences from Ghent University in 2002. From that time she became assistant professor at Hasselt University, but returned in 2005 to her alma mater, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, as fulltime associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Solvay Business School responsible for the courses (Digital) Marketing, Market Research and Consumer Behavior. While she has currently reduced her appointment at VUB temporarily to 30%, she presently also teaches a course in purchasing behavior at the University of Ghent (10%).

Malaika Brengman has built up extensive expertise in the fields of consumer psychology, buying behaviour, retail marketing and marketing communication effectiveness, with a focus on new media and new technologies (such as robots, AI, VR & AR). She has established the research cluster MARK within the Business department, which she has led up until now. Over the last ten years 8 phd’s were successfully defended under her supervision. Her scientific output is internationally recognized, with more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed books and international scientific journals, several with impact factor, with multiple contributions reaching well over 200 citations, amounting to more than 3600 citations in Google Scholar (h-index = 32). See also https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/malaika-brengman and https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9860-7107. She published in internationally renowned scientific journals such as ‘Journal of Business Research’, ‘Psychology & Marketing’, ‘Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services’, ‘International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management’, ‘Journal of Service Management’, ‘Computers in Human Behavior’ and ‘Technological Forecasting and Social Change’. While her academic research is fundamental in nature, it most often has practical managerial, commercial or societal relevance and therefore is often conducted in close collaboration with industrial partners (cf. ShelfService, Digitopia, Philips, International Duty Free, Gamma, IKEA, Colruyt, etc…). She regularly gives lectures at conferences and seminars in the Netherlands and abroad and has an outstanding track record of science communication to a wider audience through the many interviews in newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

Deeply committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, Malaika Brengman was the driving force and editor of the recently published POINcaré book ‘Post Viraal naar een Nieuw Normaal: VUB-stemmen over de impact van corona op onze samenleving’, with contributions from various VUB colleagues. She is part of BruBotics (Brussels Human Robotics Research Center) and conducts research together with the AI-Lab. She is also a member of the Dutch Retail Innovation Platform and provides policy advice acting as an expert in the academic think tank on optimal consumer protection, set up by State Secretary for Consumer Protection Eva De Bleeker.