Lecture: "The Neighborhood Ecology of Family Influence on Delinquency and Violence"
The Center for Research on Families presents Deborah Gorman-Smith of the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Psychiatry and the Institute for Juvenile Research.
Professor Gorman-Smith’s work focuses on families living in urban poor communities, looking at the relationship between the community and family violence and the connection between delinquency and antisocial behavior. Her research involves understanding how the family tasks of raising and protecting children are affected by the social context in which they live (e.g., exposure to violence, neighborhood conditions, the schools the children attend, the peer groups they affiliate with). She has received considerable national and foundation funding for her work including the Chicago Youth Development Study, tracking the development of risk for school failure, antisocial behavior, and violence among inner-city male adolescents; the SAFE Children Schools and Families Educating Children looking at the effects of a family-based comprehensive preventative- intervention for later drug and substance use; and the CDC Violence Prevention Initiative (GREAT Schools and Families): a multi-site school violence prevention initiative including UIC, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Georgia at Athens, an Duke University.
Deborah Gorman Smith’s presentation is part of the Center for Research on Families’ Tay Gavin Erickson Lectures, which brings nationally recognized speakers with expertise in family research to campus each year. The lecture series began in 1999 though an endowment established in memory of Tay Gavin Erickson. The speakers provide public lectures, highlighting the importance of research on the family and its implications for public policy. The Center for Research on Families (CRF) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst actively supports and disseminates social and behavioral sciences research on issues relevant to families.