Professor Emerita Laurette Dubé was awarded the McGill University Medal for Exceptional Academic Achievement on May 27, in recognition of a career that has reshaped how researchers, policymakers and practitioners work together to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges. The McGill Medal is the University’s highest academic honour.
Presented at the Desautels Faculty of Management ceremony by Dean Yolande Chan, the honour celebrates Dubé’s long career at McGill, where she built an international reputation not only as a prolific scholar but as a bridge-builder across disciplines and sectors.
“Laurette Dubé … is an internationally renowned scholar whose career exemplifies exceptional academic achievement, visionary leadership and enduring societal impact,” said Chan. “Over nearly three decades at McGill University, she has advanced path-breaking research while building institutions, networks and approaches that bridge science, policy and real-world action.”
Interdisciplinary interests
Dubé’s intellectual journey has never followed a straight line. Originally trained in nutrition, she later earned graduate degrees in finance, marketing and behavioural-decision science, becoming a professor at Desautels. That breadth would become a defining strength. Rather than settling within a single discipline, she built a career around understanding people in their intricacy as biological, psychological and social beings embedded in systems that shape behaviour.
“I fell in love with understanding us as human beings in all our complexity, but also as a society, with all our limitations,” Dubé said.
Her research has spanned affect and emotion, decision-making and consumer behaviour, as well as the broader systems that influence health and well-being. She is widely credited with helping to shape modern services marketing using experimental and computational methods, while also contributing foundational insights into how emotions influence decisions.
Over the course of her career, Dubé has been the author of more than 175 publications and ranks among the top two per cent of scientists worldwide in both marketing and nutrition and dietetics – a rare distinction that reflects sustained excellence across fields that do not often intersect.
Turning knowledge into action
But Dubé’s work has never been confined to academic journals. A thread throughout her career has been to ensure that science does not remain siloed but instead informs how societies function and evolve.
She has brought together disciplines, sectors and real-world actors to address such challenges as food systems transformation, chronic disease prevention and sustainable development.
Her efforts led to the creation of the McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics, where she served as founding chair and scientific director. The centre has become a global platform linking researchers with policymakers, industry leaders and community organizations across North America, Europe and Africa.
Through these collaborations, Dubé has helped mobilize more than $68 million in research, training and implementation initiatives – work that emphasizes not only understanding complex systems but changing them.
Bridging disciplines, shaping systems
It is not enough, Dubé said, to identify problems or describe human behaviour; researchers must also engage with the contexts in which decisions are made and work alongside those who have the power to implement change.
That perspective has also shaped her work as an educator and mentor. Over the years, she has developed innovative doctoral and professional programs and guided generations of students and early-career scholars, many of whom now hold leadership roles around the world.
Her influence extends beyond academia, with collaborations spanning international organizations, governments and civil society. She has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
A lifetime of learning
For Dubé, the roots of this lifelong pursuit of knowledge stretch back to her early years.
“I come from a farming family with 13 children,” she said. “During Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, I was among the first in my family to have access to university. That forever shaped how I see myself: until the day I die, I want to keep learning.”
That commitment to learning, and to applying knowledge in ways that matter, has defined a career that continues to influence how complex global challenges are understood and addressed.