Jeffrey Stokes joins the Illinois State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology as an assistant professor. His areas of expertise are in methods and statistics, marriage and the family, and social gerontology. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology at Boston College in 2017 and holds an M.A. in theology from Boston College.

Stokes has presented his research at numerous national conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association and the Gerontological Society of America. His research has been published in journals such as The Gerontologist, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. He received the Englehard Pingree Research Fellowship from Boston College in 2015. He also received the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship and an Institute on Aging Dissertation Grant at Boston College in 2015.

His research investigates intergenerational, marital, and social relationships in mid- and later life, with a focus on their implications for health and well-being. Current projects include examinations of dyadic marital quality and well-being in couples (recently highlighted in Bloomberg News), social network effects on mental health among older adults, and the mental and physical health implications of day-to-day age discrimination and social integration/isolation across the life course.

In his spare time, Stokes likes playing ice hockey, reading good books but watching bad movies, and hiking with his wife, Christa, and their rescue dog, Blue.