The Emerson Center Florida Humanities Series, in partnership with the Florida Humanities Council and sponsored in part by Marine Bank & Trust, continues on Thursday, January 17th at 7 p.m. with Immigration’s Impact on Florida and the United States presented by Alex Stepick, Ph.D.

Dr. Stepick is director, Immigration and Ethnicity Institute and professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. He has been studying immigration and its impact on Miami for 30 years and has published nine books along with many journal articles and book chapters. His co-authored book, City on the Edge, has won two national awards. Pride Against Prejudice is the primary source for understanding Haitians in the U.S. His recent book, This Land is Our Land, has been described as “superior” and providing a “new framework for understanding immigration and interethnic relations.” His most recent book is Churches and Charity: Immigrant Religion and Civic Engagement. The American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology gave Stepick the Margaret Mead Award for his work with Haitian refugees. His law review article on U.S. refugee and asylum law is used as a definitive reference in classrooms at major law schools throughout the U.S. For 2008-09, he had a Fulbright Fellowship at the Institute of European Ethnology of Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

The Emerson Center is handicapped-accessible and is conveniently located at 1590 27th Avenue, on the SE corner of 16th Street and 27th Avenue in Vero Beach.