Tay Gavin Erickson Lecture Series—This presentation will explore the role of political socialization within the family in sustainting the upper-class bias in who participates in American politics.

Dr. Laura Stoker is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the development and change of political attitudes, and behavior, with a focus on family influences and generational change. She also writes on topics at the intersection of research design and statistics. She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on political psychology and research methods. Stoker has served on the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Studies 1994-2002 (Chair 2000-2002). She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Hallsworth Fellow at the University of Manchester, and a Politics Visitor at Nuffield College, Oxford University.

This lecture is sponsored by Department of Political Science and Legal Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and cosponsored by the the Center for Research on Families’ Tay Gavin Erickson Lecture Series. The Center for Research on Families (CRF) is an endowed interdisciplinary research center in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Tay Gavin Erickson Lectures Series brings internationally recognized speakers with expertise in family research to campus each year. The lecture series began in 1999 through an endowment established in memory of Tay Gavin Erickson.