KATHREIN
MIRIAM
Miriam Kathrein is a design practitioner, curator, and cultural researcher. She currently leads Innovation Management at EIT Culture and Creativity South, East & Alps in Vienna, where she also serves as Program Manager for the Circular Fashion Adaptor within the New European Bauhaus programme. Furthermore, she is heading the newly launched Innovation Lab "Creative Catalyst Austria", which aims to foster cross-sectoral creative innovation across Austria and Europe.
Previously, she led AFA Futures at the Austrian Fashion Association, focusing on just sustainability and social impact through creative work, future-forward fashion design, and radical creativity. As Managing Director of Werkraum Bregenzerwald, she explored the transformative roles of craftspeople and designers. She also developed programs in design, architecture, and fashion at departure, the creative center of the Vienna Business Agency, with a strong emphasis on urban production, circularity, sustainability, new work, and social entrepreneurship. Her curatorial practice began at Kunsthaus Bregenz and Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam. She has curated exhibitions at Kunstverein Hamburg and TBA21 in Vienna. In academia, she taught in the departments of Contextual Design and Art and Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and conducted research on the exhibition as a form of practice.
Her work is grounded in post-disciplinary, process-driven, and collaborative practices, with a focus on design and radical creativity as a tool for social and cultural transformation.