Schulich Marketing Chair Russell Belk Received Title of Distinguished Research Professor
York University honored Schulich School of Business Professor Russell W. Belk with the title of Distinguished Research Professor at Spring Convocation in June 2014. The title is given to active faculty members in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the University through research. A Distinguished Research Professorship is awarded for life and evolves into a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus upon retirement.
Professor Russell Belk is the Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at the Schulich School of Business since 2006. His research involves the meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, sharing and materialism and his work is often cultural, visual, qualitative and interpretive.
Professor Belk has sustained an unprecedented degree of productivity over the course of his academic and research career, now spanning about four decades. The sheer number of published journal articles, books, book chapters, and conference proceedings that Professor Belk has authored or co-authored is astronomical. The majority of his articles have appeared in top tier journals and they have gathered numerous awards and accolades. Professor Belk’s research has been cited more than 28,000 times (Google Scholar), placing him among the most cited Canadian business school academics. His 118-page curriculum vitae lists over 550 publications and numerous books that he has co-authored and edited. They include Consumer Culture Theory: Research in Consumer Behavior (2014); Russell Belk, Sage Legends in Consumer Behavior, 10-volumes (2014); Qualitative Consumer and Marketing Research (2013); Routledge Companion to Digital Consumption (2013), and The Routledge Companion to Identity and Consumption (2013). One of the stellar examples is his paper “Possessions and the Extended Self” published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 1988 which dramatically reshaped how people think about consumer identity. It is the most cited article in the 40-year history of the journal.
Widely considered by academics around the world to be “the father of qualitative marketing research”, Professor Belk was presented with the Schulich School of Business’s inaugural Dean’s Research Impact Award in January 2013. The award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in research and whose work has had a major impact on management education.
“Professor Belk has produced an extraordinary volume of top-calibre research of the sort that keeps Schulich among the world’s leading business schools in management research,” said Dean Dezsö J. Horváth.
Professor Belk has also received the prestigious Paul D. Converse Award for outstanding contributions to marketing scholarship, the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Consumer Research Award for Long Term Contribution to Consumer Research, the Society of Marketing Advances 2013 Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, two Fulbright Fellowships and honorary professorships on four continents.
Over his career, Professor Belk has been awarded thousands of dollars in research funding from both the private and public sectors. After receiving an impressive three year grant of just over $195,000 from SSHRC in 2013, he has received another SSHRC grant, with regards to ‘Psychological Drivers of the Discrepancy between Traditional and Touchscreen Equipment,’ along with Ying Zhu.
He is the past president of the Association for Consumer Research and the International Association of Marketing and Development. He is a fellow in the Association for Consumer Research and the American Psychological Association, as well as the co-founder of the Association for Consumer Research Film Festival. He served as the director on the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium. For countless years, Professor Belk has been involved in many editorial roles. For instance, he sits on the Advisory board for the Journal of China Marketing, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Applied Economics Research Bulletin, Behavioral Marketing Abstracts, etc. He also sits on the Editorial Board for Annals of Social Responsibility, International Journal of Business Anthropology, Journal of Marketing in Emerging Economies, Journal of History Research in Marketing, etc.
Professor Belk is a phenomenal educator. He received the Best Professor in Marketing award by the World Education Congress in 2012. He has taught a variety of courses in the marketing field at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. He has played significant roles with the supervision of many graduate students. He has been a visiting scholar at Hong Kong University. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Exeter, England; Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand; Lancaster University Management School, England; Davidson Institute, University of Michigan, USA; and University of British Columbia, Canada.
Over the course of his long career, Professor Belk has been instrumental in helping to advance the career of countless others. He has also invited people from schools around the world to co-edit books with him or to co-author papers. A number of young scholars have benefited in this way from his generous spirit of intellectual adventure and engagement.
“If he sees someone with a bright mind, he is ‘blind’ to their institutional affiliation; he finds a way of working with them and in doing so he invariably helps integrate them into a broader network of scholars, and advance their publication records,” said Eileen Fischer, Schulich’s Professor of Marketing, Anne & Max Tanenbaum Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise and the Director of PhD Program. “Hiring Professor Belk in 2006 was a ‘coup’ for our department, but having him as a colleague has exceeded my expectations in every way. He is not just a celebrity scholar who increases our reputation, but a solid citizen in terms of teaching and service, willing to do what is needed and to go beyond the call of duty.”