Kate Christensen
- Assistant Professor
- Kimberly-Clark Corporation Pre-Tenure Scholar
Campus: Bloomington
Biography
Professor Kate Christensen studies how our connection to the past shapes the decisions we make today. Her research on heritage
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Professor Kate Christensen studies how our connection to the past shapes the decisions we make today. Her research on heritage connection (connection to “the people who came before us”) has been published in the Journal of Marketing Research and was awarded the Xavier Dreze Prize. Her work also appears in the Journal of Consumer Research and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and has been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor Christensen joined the Marketing Department at the Kelley School of Business in July 2021. She received her M.B.A. and Ph.D. at UCLA Anderson School of Management and her A.B. in History at Brown. Prior to entering academia, Kate led digital teams at The Walt Disney Company and Sony Pictures Television. She teaches Creativity and Communication, and loves improv and the WNBA.
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Areas of Expertise
Time (Heritage Connection, Future Self), Financial Decision-Making (Money, Saving, Trading), Policing (Connection across Space, Officer Training)
Academic Degrees
- Ph.D. in Marketing, University of California, Los Angeles
- M.B.A., University of California, Los Angeles
- A.B. in History, Brown University
Professional Experience
- Director of Digital Media, Sony Pictures Television
- Managing Producer, The Walt Disney Company
Awards, Honors & Certificates
- National Residence Hall Honorary; RHA Faculty of the Month, Indiana University, 2024
- Kimberly Clark Pre-Tenure Scholar, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, 2024 - present
- Research Accelerator Fellow, 2024 - present
- Mittelstaedt and Gentry Doctoral Symposium, Invited Faculty, 2024
- Institute for Environmental and Social Sustainability Fellow, 2023-present
- Trustees Teaching Award, 2022
- Innovative Teaching Award Finalist, Kelley School of Business, 2022
- Xavier Drèze Prize, 2021
- Fellow, AMA-Sheth Foundation, 2020-2021
- Fellow, Marketing Strategy Consortium, 2020
Selected Publications
- Christensen, K. L., and Shu, S. B. (2024). The Role of Heritage Connection in Consumer Valuation. Journal of Marketing Research, 61(3), 571-586 (Work featured in Washington Post). View Full Text
- Christensen, K. L., Hershfield, H. E., and Maglio, S. B. (2024). Back to the Present: How Direction of Mental Time Travel Affects Similarity and Saving. Journal of Consumer Research, 51(4), 761–774 (Work featured in Wall Street Journal, Forbes). View Full Text
Edited on December 5, 2025
