“HDFS Professor Couples Drag Culture, Gerontology in Her Work” (Kimberly Phillips, 2022 via UConn Today)

The pieces of Laura Donorfio’s professional life seem to have just fallen into place.

In 2004, she left her job as director of a qualitative research lab that focused on gerontology for a faculty position in human development and family sciences at UConn Waterbury – in the same city she was born and raised, and where, as a young girl, she fostered a revering love for the older generation.

To be able to share that with University students as part of a then-developing major at the campus, was a dream, she says. Five years later when the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education honored her with its distinguished teaching award, she knew she’d made a good move.

This fall, she is poised to receive the organization’s Clark Tibbitts Award for her contributions to the field of gerontological education and set to publish with two co-authors the book “Gerontology Field Placement: Internships and Practicums in the Field of Aging,” and she almost – almost – feels complete.

With an introduction to drag culture over the last few years via her adult son, Donorfio, now an associate professor, is working on research that focuses on drag queens over the age of 50 and what their motivators have been through the years in the face of adversity.

Read more, here.

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