The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy invites participation in the following areas of work:

1. Multidisciplinary research collaboratives led by UCLA faculty to advance knowledge about key social problems and to contribute to the policy frameworks, activist practices, community organizing, and public narratives associated with these issues.

Research Themes for 2016–2017 include:

Evictions, Displacement and Houselessness in the Global City

Wealth, Inequality, and Philanthropy

Welfare and Social Protection in the 21st Century

Civil and Financial Disobedience

Policing and Incarceration

2. Year-long graduate student working groups organized around analytical research themes and with proposed activities that foster connections across and beyond UCLA.

3. The James Irvine Fellow on Urban Life, a residence program funded by the James Irvine Foundation to bring to the institute scholar-activists to undertake social movement research and pedagogy directly concerned with equity at the urban scale.

4. Public conversations to convene and curate discussion and dialogue on key issues relevant to Los Angeles and more broadly California cities.

5. Undergraduate curriculum and pedagogy developed through partnership with UCLA departments to advance the work of “decolonizing the university.”

6. Dissemination of the institute’s work in various formats ranging from a book series with the University of California press to digital media and art projects.

7. An annual distinguished lecture which celebrates the lifetime achievement of a scholar in the field of social justice.

The Annual Distinguished Lecture:

The 2016 Annual Distinguished Lecture was delivered by

Professor John Friedmann on April 26th, 2016. 

The title of his talk: “The Ruse of Reason: Poverty, Inequality, and Personal Freedoms in the People’s Republic of China 1950-2015”

8. An annual conference convened to highlight the research contributions of the institute and to convene scholarship and activism across North and South.