Book Talk | Dalton Conley | The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture

Join the Institute for Public Knowledge on Monday, April 28th (5:30-7:00 PM) for an event with Dalton Conley. He will discuss his book The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture with Susan Dominus and Byungkyu Lee. 

Dalton Conley is the Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Office of Population Research and the Center for Health and Wellbeing.  He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and in a pro bono capacity, he serves as Dean of Health Sciences for the University of the People, a tuition-free, accredited, online college committed to expanding access to higher education. Conley’s scholarship has primarily dealt with the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic and health status from parents to children. His books include Being Black, Living in the Red; The Starting Gate; Honky; The Pecking Order; You May Ask Yourself; Elsewhere, USA;Parentology; and The Genome Factor. His new book The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture will be published in March 2025.

Susan Dominus has worked for The New York Times since 2007, first as a Metro columnist and then as staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. In 2018, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for its reporting on workplace sexual harassment. She won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and a Mychal Judge Heart of New York Award from the New York Press Club. She has studied as a fellow at the National Institutes of Health and Yale Law School. Her article about menopause in The New York Times Magazine won a National Magazine Award in 2024. She teaches journalism at Yale University.

Dr. Byungkyu Lee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University. He received his PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and taught at Indiana University before joining NYU. He is actively working on multiple projects in three main research areas: the co-evolution of social networks, cultural beliefs, and political polarization; using causal inference, multilevel modeling and network analysis to examine how social contexts shape health status and behaviors; and studying the social consequences of crises and disasters, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic.