Skip to main content

Poverty expert Gene Nichol to speak at UNC School of Social Work

Gene Nichol will speak on the issues of poverty and policy in North Carolina on Friday, Oct. 7, at the UNC School of Social Work in Chapel Hill. The event, which begins at 12:15 p.m. in the auditorium of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building, is free and open to the public.

Nichol is the Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His lecture is hosted by Iris Carlton-LaNey, a social work professor, who in recent years has invited Nichol to speak to students in her social policy classes.

“Poverty is such a serious and pervasive problem in our state, and Gene’s talks bring these conditions to light as he shares his conversations with some of North Carolina’s most destitute people,” Carlton-LaNey said.

Nichol is a former president of the College of William and Mary and a former dean of the UNC School of Law. The North Carolina Poverty Research Fund supports his current scholarly work. His interest and work on poverty issues gained additional attention in 2013, when he authored a 12-part series, “Seeing the Invisible,” that was published in The News & Observer. The series captured the faces of poverty in North Carolina, from people waiting all night for free dental work to military veterans living in homeless camps outside their former U.S. Army base to marginally employed persons eating at soup kitchens and sleeping in their cars.

Nichol’s lecture at the UNC School of Social Work will further highlight the often hidden needs of marginalized populations in our state, Carlton-LaNey added.

“His talks always speak to the politics of evidence and expose the silencing that has obscured the real conditions of a major percentage of North Carolinians,” Carlton-LaNey said.