Two Women Ivy League Professors Receive the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences

The BBVA Foundation, a Spain-based foundation dedicated to supporting scientific research and cultural creation, has recently presented the 2025 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences to five professors, two of whom are women. The prize recognizes outstanding scholars who have revolutionized the way we understand and measure attitudes through social science research.

Dolores Albarracín is the Alexandra Heyman Nash University Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a Penn faculty member for over two decades, currently serving as director of the Social Action Lab, the Communication Science Division, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. She also holds the title of Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor.

In her scholarly work, Dr. Albarracín focuses on understanding how attitudes can be changed and exploring ways to discredit disinformation and conspiracy theories. She has authored numerous scholarly publications, including her most recent book, Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Thoughts Are Shaped (Cambridge University Press, 2021). She is a leading expert in her field and has served as president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and editor-in-chief of the Psychological Bulletin.

Dr. Albarracín received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the Catholic University of La Plata in Argentina and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Mahzarin Banaji is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the department of psychology at Harvard University. She joined the Harvard community in 2002 after 14 years on the faculty at Yale University. She currently holds appointments as the inaugural Carol K. Pforzhemier Professor at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and as the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Chair in Human Dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

Throughout her career as a social psychologist, Dr. Banaji has conducted extensive research on the disparities between people’s conscious expressions of their values, attitudes, and beliefs and the less conscious representation of their mind’s content. More recently, she has turned her attention to analyzing bias in generative artificial intelligence models. With her colleague Anthony Greenwald (another recipient of the 2025 Frontiers of Knowledge Award), she co-authored Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (Delacorte Press, 2013).

A native of India, Dr. Banaji earned her Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from Ohio State University.