A month after the sudden death of Professor Franco Anelli, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Board has appointed a new Rector: Professor Elena Beccalli (50), Dean of the School of Banking, Finance, and Insurance Sciences, Director of the Research Centre on Cooperative Mutual Banking at the University, and President of the Italian section of the European Society for Banking and Financial Law (AEDBF).
For the first time in the University’s history, a woman has been appointed to this role. She is the ninth Rector of the University and will take office on July 1. She will lead the University for a four-year term, 2024-2028.
“Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore is a ‘universal’ academic institution by vocation, where dialogue and confrontation are open, free, interdisciplinary, and oriented towards the creation of networks and strategic alliances. It can offer a forward-looking approach to contemporary challenges, with accuracy, creativity, and courage, thanks to the coordinated efforts of its vibrant academic community,” Professor Beccalli said after the appointment, thanking the academic staff and the Board of Directors.
“Università Cattolica should have the capacity to renew itself, implementing a process of innovation based on consolidated and recognised roots. The intention is to ensure that our university is a natural source from which civil society, institutions, the labor market and, furthermore, the Italian and universal Church can draw. A model that can represent the best university ‘for’ the world,” she added.
The University was about to appoint a new rector when the former one, Professor Anelli, unexpectedly died at the end of May. Because of that, the process was expedited and the Board came up with her name after only a month.
She is a research associate of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics (UK), where previously she was also a tutorial fellow, lecturer and visiting professor. She is an academic fellow at the Centre for Responsible Banking & Finance at the University of St. Andrews. She was a visiting professor at the Singapore Institute of Management and at the China Center for Economic Research at Beijing University. Her main areas of research focus on the banking sector analyzed from the perspective of industrial organization, with particular attention to the themes of technology, efficiency, cooperation and financial biodiversity. In recent years, her studies have focused on issues of ethics and inclusiveness, sustainability, artificial intelligence and women’s leadership.
