Dolores Albarracín appointed new director of Annenberg Public Policy Center
Albarracín is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts & Sciences. She is assuming the role from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the inaugural director since 1993.
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Since its founding, Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) has examined public opinion and the effects of fact-checking and other forms of communication across politics and civics, health and science, adolescent risk, and climate. On July 1st, 2026, Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Dolores Albarracín assumed the policy center’s directorship.
Dolores Albarracín, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts & Sciences, has been appointed director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
(Image: Courtesy of the Annenberg School for Communication)
Under Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the University’s Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and then-dean of ASC, it has produced influential research on topics as diverse as civics education and campaign finance reform, children’s television programming and civility in Congress, suicide reporting guidelines for news media and messaging about vaccine policy and substance use.
In June 1993, publisher, philanthropist, and ambassador Walter H. Annenberg announced what was then the largest gift to private education in U.S. history, $365 million, to several institutions. The gift included $120 million to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania—$100 million to endow ASC and $20 million to create APPC, to be directed by Jamieson.
“There is no scholar in the country more qualified to direct the policy center at this time than Dolores Albarracín,” says Jamieson, who will take on the title of director emerita and continue to supervise several research areas at APPC.
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