The University of Stirling welcomed Dr Victoria DeFrancesco Soto to the campus on 15 March to give a lecture titled The Roller Coaster Ride to the White House: The 2012 Presidential Election.
DeFrancesco Soto, who is the Director of Communications for Latino Decisions and a Senior Fellow at the Bernard Center for Women, Politics, and Public Policy and a Fellow at the Centre for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, gave the talk to a capacity crowd in the Pathfoot Lecture Theatre.
DeFrancesco Soto talked about her research analysis which looks at how social identities shape political behaviour. She specialises in campaigns and elections, political marketing, race and ethnic politics, and immigration and her talk was of particular interest to the staff and history and politics students who attended.
The visit was organised by Jo Hagerty, from the Student Recruitment and Admissions Service. She said: “This is the second US State Department-sponsored speaker we have hosted on campus this academic year and both lectures have been extremely popular with our students, faculty and staff. We have shown ourselves to be good hosts, and I hope that this will encourage the US Embassy in London to bring future speakers to Stirling.
“Victoria enjoyed her first visit to Scotland, and she highlighted that our students asked interesting questions following her lecture.”
DeFrancesco Soto said: “I very much enjoyed my visit to Stirling University where I found and intense interest in the upcoming U.S. elections. The talk and follow up discussion was vibrant and most importantly fun. I look forward to visiting Stirling again for a follow up analysis of the ‘Roller Coaster to the White House.’ ”