Loretta Bass

Voting, International Migration, Child Labor, Stratification Issues, Fertility, Demography

Loretta came to the University of Oklahoma in 1999 after earning her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut and completing a two-year appointment within the Fertility and Family Branch of the Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. Loretta is a demographer who focuses her research on stratification issues and civil and human rights in the United States, Africa and Europe. Her book, African Immigrant Families Another France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), examines the integration experiences of international migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to France. Her prior book, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), offers a window on the lives of child workers in 43 African countries.

Loretta is currently the Series Editor for the Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY), and serves on the Editorial Board for the journals Social Problems, Population Research and Policy Review, and Sociology. In addition, she has served in leadership positions in the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Children and Youth Section, first as Newsletter Editor (1999-2003) and later as Chair of the Section (2010-12). She also served on the ASA National Membership Committee (2018-19) and as the elected Secretary-Treasurer for the ASA International Migration Section (2016-19). Active in the International Sociological Association (ISA), Loretta served on the Board of the Research Committee (RC 53) on the Sociology of Childhood (2006-10) and later as President from 2014-18 of the Research Committee on Childhood. Presently, she is serving as Secretary-Treasurer in the Thematic Group on Human Rights in the ISA for a term of 2018-23.

Loretta's research agenda has been supported through funding from the National Science Foundation, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.S. Census Bureau, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, and the University of Oklahoma Foundation.