Dec 3, 2018
Bucheli, Albarracin named CAS Associates
Two Gies College of Business professors have been named 2019-2020 Associates for the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Associate Professor of International Business Marcelo Bucheli and Professor of Marketing Dolores Albarracin are being recognized for their exceptional scholarly achievement.
Each year, University of Illinois faculty are invited to submit scholarly or creative proposals for consideration by the Center’s permanent professors. Faculty members with winning proposals are appointed Associates and Fellows and are awarded one semester of release time to pursue their projects in the coming academic year. Professors, Associates, and Fellows are invited to participate in CAS events and have opportunities to present their work to the CAS community.
“It’s a great achievement for two faculty with appointments at Gies College of Business to be designated CAS Associates,” said Cele Otnes, Head of the Department of Business Administration. “Both of these scholars have stellar international reputations, and it’s rewarding that they received this recognition for their continued productivity and impact.”
“This fellowship recognizes the value of the interdisciplinary research approaches Gies College of Business has traditionally supported,” said Bucheli. “I will combine history, corporate strategy, and political economy to understand the evolution of coffee, one of the most traded goods in the world. This honor also recognizes the value of business history, a discipline that owes its existence largely to the efforts made decades ago by faculty at the University of Illinois.”
Albarracin’s project will test an original model of secrecy and conspiracy theories with a probability sample of US inhabitants and a transformative big data study of social media. In the era of post truth, the project will illuminate how conspiratorial thinking about politics, science, and health polarizes audiences and jeopardizes democratic life, and how social media incubates these processes.
Albarracin is a Professor of Marketing at Gies College of Business in addition to her duties as a Professor of Psychology. She earned her master’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1994, and then she completed her PhD in social psychology at the University of Illinois in 1997. Her research focuses on attitudes and social cognition, motivational processes, and applications of social cognition to disease prevention programs.
“Seven years ago, this appointment allowed me to make major progress on important work regarding attitudes and persuasion,” said Albarracin. “I feel honored to be named a fellow again and look forward to having time to reflect and write about conspiracy theories, an area of high relevance to the US and the world.”
Established in 1959, the Center for Advanced Study is charged with promoting the highest levels of scholarship and discourse. Today CAS supports the extraordinary resources at the University of Illinois by encouraging and promoting exemplary scholarship in all areas of knowledge.