Dr. Matthew Lee, associate vice chancellor of the Office of Research at Louisiana State University, will discuss the Community Context of Violence and Public Health from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 25, at UALR in the ARKLA Room, (Room 119) in Ross Hall.

The talk, the second in the Sheriff Orval Walker Lecture Series presented by the UALR Department of Criminal Justice, is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Jeff Walker at 501-569-3083.

Lee, a professor of sociology at LSU, has been recognized as one of the top 100 research and creative faculty at the college and is currently overseeing the university’s research in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

His research and teaching interests are in the broad areas of criminal violence and public health. The substance of his scholarly work lies in the areas of racial inequality, social structure and violence, cultural influences on violence, and community public health issues.

Lee has authored more than 55 professional papers and has been awarded more than $750,000 to further his research program. His research has been published in outlets such as American Behavioral Scientist, Annals of Epidemiology, Social Science and Medicine, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Criminology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Deviant Behavior, and Justice Quarterly.

Lee earned a B.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and his M.A. and Ph.D. from LSU.

UALR’s Sheriff Orval Walker Lecture Series honors a police officer of Mena and Sheriff of Polk County. He was one of the first American paratroopers, serving in the 501st Airborne Division and was on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He died last August at the age of 92. He was the father of Dr. Jeffrey Walker, chair of UALR’s Department of Criminal Justice, whose family created the lecture series in his memory.