Elena Bruni
Biography
Elena Bruni is an Assistant Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, Italy and a former Marie Curie Skłodowska researcher at the Institute for Organization Studies at WU Vienna. She obtained her PhD in Management and Business from the University of Venice. Her research focuses on the linguistic and rhetorical processes that stimulate institutional change. In particular, she examines the mechanisms in which metaphors and other figures of speech are used to ascribe legitimacy, and how different modes of communication (e.g., visual and written) may trigger or stifle collective action. Her work has been published recently in the Academy of Management Review and The Oxford Handbook of Metaphor in Organization Studies (2024) including two chapters written by her and her colleague Claudio Biscaro. She was awarded with an additional European Commission Grant (2022-2025) to continue researching science denial and institutional trust. She is currently a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at University of Pittsburgh teaching “The Rhetoric of Science Denial.”