Eleanor Palo Stoller joined the WFU Sociology Department as a Research Professor in September, 2005. She moved to North Carolina from Cleveland, Ohio, where she was the Selah Chamberlain Professor of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. She has also been on the faculties of the University of Florida and the State University of New York (Plattsburgh).

Professor Stoller is interested in the ways in which older people and their families manage frailty and disease in late life, especially the contributions of women as unpaid providers of health care. One strand of this research involves medical self-care. Dr. Stoller is interested in how people craft lay explanations of disease and how these lay understandings influence their responses to particular symptoms and their strategies for living with chronic conditions. Another strand of her research examines older people’s informal support networks. She has written about the ways in which gender influences helping relationships between elderly parents and their adult children. Her current research examines the role of ethnicity and migration history on informal networks of retired Sunbelt migrants.

Dr. Stoller has taught a range of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Medical Sociology, Aging and the Life Course, Gender, Work and Family, Survey Research, and Qualitative Methods. An underlying theme of all of Dr. Stoller’s research and teaching is the impact of systems of inequality, particularly those based on gender, race/ethnicity, and social class, on the experience of growing old. She encourages her students to think about gender, race, and class as social constructs, as classifications based on social values that influence identity formation, opportunity structures, and adaptive resources. This approach is incorporated into Worlds of Difference: Inequality and the Aging Experience, a textbook (co-authored with Rose Campbell Gibson) that explores the impact of gender, race, and social class on the life course experiences of elderly Americans.

Dr. Stoller is married to Michael Alan Stoller, whom she met building a homecoming float when they were both undergraduates at Grinnell College (Iowa). Mike is an economist, also a retired professor. Eleanor and Mike have two children: Jeffrey, who lives in Greensboro with his family, and Kirsten, who lives in suburban Boston. They are also grandparents of Evan Michael Stoller, who lives with his parents in Greensboro. A constant companion is Archie, their three-year old Golden Retriever.

Professor Stoller has authored more than 70 articles and more than 100 presentations at conferences and professional meetings. She has served on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Journal of Aging Studies, The Gerontologist, The Sociological Quarterly, The Sociological Quarterly and Family Relations. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.