Lynn Vavreck is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA, a contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, and a recipient of the Andrew F. Carnegie Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the author of five books, including Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, and The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, described as the “definitive account” of the 2012 election. Political consultants on both sides of the aisle refer to her work on political messaging as “required reading” for presidential candidates. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and she has served on the advisory boards of both the British and American National Election Studies. At UCLA she teaches courses on campaigns, elections, public opinion, and the 1960s. Vavreck holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Rochester and held previous appointments at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and The White House.  

Featuring Roberto G. Gonzales,  author of the award-winning book Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. Gonzales is the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of Education.

Gonzales' research focuses on factors that shape and reduce economic, legal, and social inequalities among vulnerable and hard-to-reach youth populations as they transition to adulthood. He is the founding director of the Penn Migration Initiative, which advances and promotes scholarship and intellectual exchange around issues of immigration policy and immigrant communities. Gonzales has also held faculty positions at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington.

Since 2002, Gonzales has carried out one of the most comprehensive studies of undocumented immigrants in the United States. In addition to Lives in Limbo, which is based on an in-depth study that followed 150 undocumented young adults in Los Angeles for twelve years, Gonzales conducted the seven-year longitudinal National UnDACAmented Research Project, which included surveying 2,700 undocumented young adults and conducting 500 in-depth interviews on their experiences following President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Will Jones, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, will deliver the Bob Bussel Labor History Lecture on April 24, 2025.

The UO Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) created the lecture in recognition of Bob Bussel’s years of service as LERC’s director and an affiliated member of the UO history department.  The lecture features historians with a distinguished record of scholarship, a commitment to public history, and an interest in labor and working-class issues.  Will Jones is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota with a particular interest in issues of race and class.  Professor Jones is the author of two books and numerous articles on labor and working-class history.  He is also a past president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.