Kassen Lecture – Dr. Heidi J. Larson: “Emotional Contagion in Times of COVID: From Fear to Hope”

Heidi Larson, Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project and Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, will present the 2021 Kassen Lecture in Anthropology. Her talk “Emotional Contagion in Times of COVID: From Fear to Hope” will be on Friday, October 29th at 9:10 a.m. via Zoom.

Professor Larson will talk about her new book, STUCK: How Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away, and the power of emotions and beliefs in the COVID-19 response. Historic and current inequities breed distrust, which can fuel anxieties and fear around mass vaccination campaigns, while building trust can instill hope, compliance and social cooperation.

She has published widely and lectured internationally on the drivers and enablers of vaccine confidence. She was awarded the 2021 Edinburgh Medal in recognition of her scientific work on the contagion of misinformation and its impact on human health.

Dr. Larson’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Case Western Reserve University COVID-19 Task Force and is being presented as the Keynote Speaker for the COVID-19 Pilot Grant Dissemination Day. For more information, click here.

Larson’s lecture is free and open to the public. Please register for the meeting here to receive the Zoom Meeting link. You can view the event flier here.

The Kassen Lecture, presented annually by the CWRU Department of Anthropology, features the work of prominent female social scientists. The Kassen Lecture series is made possible by the generous support of the estate of the late Drs. Aileen and Julian Kassen.