Public RelationsLeuven
Arthur Lauwers returns to UCLL as a guest lecturer
Five years after graduating, 6th Man founder Arthur Lauwers is back at UCLL, this time at the front of the room. From 21 September he teaches digital marketing communication to a new generation of marketers.
Arthur Lauwers, founder of 6th Man, is returning to UCLL, the university college where he learned the trade. From 21 September he teaches digital marketing communication, sharing what he has built up in practice: online marketing strategy, SEO and paid media.
“I want to teach young people how to understand digital, but I will learn from them too. They can bring a completely fresh perspective to our cases, and I will be in the front row to spot the talent.”
For Lauwers the step closes a circle. As a student he learned a great deal from guest lecturers, who gave him the chance to set up a pop-up shop. That became his first business, De Plantrekkers, and the groundwork for founding a company again later.
He graduated from UCLL in 2021 with a bachelor's degree in SME management and entrepreneurship, worked at agencies including June20, AdSomeNoise and WeAreDigital, and founded 6th Man in 2025. Every year since, he has opened the academic year with an inspirational talk for UCLL's students.
It was at one of those talks that Wout Blockx, then a UCLL student himself, first heard him speak. “When I heard him talk about his work with that much passion, I immediately thought: that is what I want to do,” says Blockx. He became Lauwers' intern at the agency where he worked at the time, and the two later founded 6th Man together.
UCLL asked Lauwers to design the whole course. “Arthur already made a very strong impression as a student,” programme lead Gudrun De Meulemeester told HLN. “He can grow into a real role model for our students.”
Read the coverage in HLN (in Dutch).
Key facts
- Who
- Arthur Lauwers, founder of 6th Man
- Where
- UCLL, Leuven
- Course
- Digital marketing communication
- Starts
- 21 September 2026
- Coverage
- HLN, 30 September 2026
About 6th Man
Most agencies build your Shopify store and hand the growth to someone else. We do both.
6th Man is a Shopify team in Ghent. We build custom stores, migrate them from WooCommerce, PrestaShop or Tilroy, and run the SEO and CRO on the same store. The people who build it are the people who grow it, so nothing gets dropped at a handoff.
We take on the work most studios pass on: big catalogs, hard custom development, and stores that sell across borders.
No account managers. You work with the senior people doing the work, in two-week sprints.
