PHILADELPHIA – Annette Lareau has been named president-elect of the American Sociological Association.  She is the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor of Social Sciences in the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences’ sociology department.

Following a year of service as president-elect, Lareau’s term as president will begin in August 2013. In the meantime, she will chair the 2014 Program Committee that will shape the 2014 ASA Annual Meeting, in San Francisco.

Lareau, whose research includes social stratification, family, education and ethnographic methods, plans to spend her year as president working to ensure that sociologists are better represented in the public debate and helping to ease sociology students’ transition into the workforce.   

She is the author of numerous publications, journal articles and books, including Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class, and Family Life.  

“Since the crash of 2008, two enduring challenges for our discipline have become increasingly salient,” Lareau said. “First, sociologists do not have a sufficient voice in public debate, even though there are many pressing policy issues which would benefit from sociological insights. Second, job prospects for young scholars are limited.”

Lareau has served on the ASA’s Committee on Committees and chaired both the Sociology of the Family and Sociology of Education sections.  Some of her other leadership positions include vice-president of the Eastern Sociological Society, deputy editor of Sociology of Education and panel member for the National Science Foundation.

The American Sociological Association is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work and advancing sociology as a science and profession.