Keynote Speakers

Russell W. Belk is the Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. He attended the University of Minnesota for his bachelor's degree in business and PhD in marketing.^[7] Prior to joining the faculty at York University, he served as the N. Eldon Tanner Professor of Business Administration at the University of Utah from 1986 to 2006.

Russ Belk’s research involves the meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, sharing, and materialism, and his work is often cultural, visual, qualitative, and interpretive. Belk is one of the most prolific contemporary consumer behavior and marketing scholars. He authored one of the seminal papers in marketing field, "Possessions and the Extended Self."

Russ Belk is the co-founder of the Association for Consumer Research Film Festival and has over 550 publications. He is currently on the editorial boards of 20 journals and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. He is past president of the Association for Consumer Research and the International Association of Marketing and Development and is a fellow in the Association for Consumer Research and the American Psychological Association. He has received the Paul D. Converse Award, two Fulbright Fellowships, Society of Marketing Advances Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, and honorary professorships on four continents. In 2005 he received the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Consumer Research Award for Long Term Contribution to Consumer Research. Besides York, he has also taught at the University of Utah, University of Illinois, Temple University, Claremont Graduate University, and universities in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia.