Lars Bergkvist's path has moved fluidly between academia and practice, spending years at media agencies and market research firms before embarking on what he calls his “itinerant existence.” Since leaving Sweden in 2004, he has lived in eight countries and taught at 15 universities in 12 countries, including Norway, the UAE, Brunei, China, Singapore, and Australia. Today, he is a clinical associate professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at NYU Abu Dhabiand a visiting research professor at the University of Wuppertal in Germany.
At 16, Bergkvist dropped out of high school. For most teenagers, that decision would have closed doors; for Bergkvist, it became the unlikely first step in a four-decade journey that has carried him from fashion photography studios to lecture halls.
“I like to think of my early professional life as slipping around on banana peels,” he says with a smile. “Things happen, you end up somewhere, and most of the time it turns out all right.” His first detour led him into the world of fashion photography, where he worked as an assistant to a prominent photographer. But urged on by his parents, he eventually returned to school, drawn by a growing fascination with advertising.
That interest solidified at the Stockholm School of Economics, where he majored in marketing before pursuing postgraduate degrees, including a PhD in advertising effectiveness. “Advertising has been very much at the core of my academic life,” he explains. “But over time I’ve expanded into consumer behavior, research methodology, and even meta-science — looking at whether researchers actually do what they say they do.”
Bergkvist’s publishing record underscores his influence in the field. He has contributed to leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Advertising, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and he currently serves as associate editor of the International Journal of Advertising. But what stands out is not just output, it’s perspective.
I find cross-cultural psychology absolutely fascinating. When confronted with foreign cultures, you start to understand your own culture much better.
The UAE has become an important backdrop in this story. Bergkvist first lived in the country between 2018 and 2022 while teaching at Zayed University, returning in 2024 to join Stern at NYUAD. He describes the marketing landscape in the region as both distinctive and challenging: “From makeup and fashion to what’s culturally acceptable, the UAE is unique,” he says. “The volumes of perfume used here, for instance, would never fly in Scandinavia. It’s all adapted to the region.”
At NYUAD, the appeal is as much about the students as the setting. “The attraction of working for Stern at NYU Abu Dhabi was very strong,” he says. “It’s one of the best universities in the world, and the quality of the students makes it a joy to teach here.”
For Bergkvist, Abu Dhabi is more than another stop on his global circuit. It’s a living laboratory of consumer behavior and marketing strategy. “From a marketing point of view, I can’t think of a place more challenging than the UAE. You’ve got Europeans, Americans, Arabs, South Asians — all in one market. I just love working in a multicultural environment.”
