Mose' Schwarz

Mosè is a PhD student and teaching assistant at USI's Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, Institute of Marketing and Communication Management (IMCA).

He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Faculté des Lettres des Lausanne (UNIL). In 2023, he obtained his Master’s degree in Media Management at the Università della Svizzera Italiana. Since 2023, he has worked for IMCA, first as a student assistant and, after graduation, as a doctoral student.

While redacting his Master's dissertation, "Consuming the Ugly: Framing Ugliness in Consumer Research," Mosè developed a deep interest in the interplay of aesthetics and consumption. Operating within consumer research, he employs qualitative methods and draws on an interdisciplinary framework to explain the pervasiveness of ugliness in the marketplace. By examining aesthetic categories that mainstream marketing tends to side — ugliness, the grotesque, the disgusting and the like — his work shows how consumers and brands mobilise the "negative" to negotiate taste, identity, and social belonging. His work contributes to the literatures on taste, creative practices and the aesthetics of consumption.