The Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy (CHRLP or “the Center”) at UCLA Law School is seeking a strategic, passionate, and experienced researcher to serve as its first Research Director. The new Research Director will play a vital role in building the vision, expanding, managing, and executing the Center’s research work, as well as its strategic collaboration and partnerships with reproductive health researchers across the nation.
The Center and its Approach
The Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy is a think tank and research center developing long-term, lasting solutions that advance all aspects of reproductive justice and address the current national crisis of abortion access.
We are lawyers, policy experts, scholars, and researchers who are working to solve America’s reproductive justice crisis. Our mission is to increase access to abortion and contraception, end racial and economic disparities in maternal health outcomes, support people who decide to build families, and dismantle the gender bias that limits reproductive justice. We do this by creating innovative legal strategies, policy solutions, and opportunities to convene around some of the most complex issues facing women, pregnant people, and families today. This is an exciting time to join CRHLP. CRHLP, launched in 2022, has already established a strong interdisciplinary team of lawyers, policy advocates, researchers, scholars, communication and events specialists, and support staff. The team is still growing and actively setting its goals and priorities, and building new bodies of work.
CRHLP’s research, legal/policy, and narrative change work is currently focused on advancing these ideas:
• Abortion is basic mainstream healthcare that should not have restrictions imposed by politicians and should be truly accessible to everyone no matter their identity, location, or economic circumstances.
• Restricting abortion and other types of reproductive health care is gender discrimination and rooted in gender stereotypes and control of women and people who can become pregnant.
• Criminalizing healthcare and punishing women, pregnant people, and families is never the best approach. Giving people access to health care and economic resources is.
• Contraception is a right, is necessary for gender equity, and should be available to all in the most easily accessible and affordable ways possible, including to teens without parental consent.
• We need laws and policy supports that help people have healthy pregnancies, build families, and raise families in safe, healthy, nondiscriminatory, and economically supportive environments.
The Center is committed to interdisciplinary research that has a direct impact on policy, legal, and narrative change. Our model bridges research and scholarship directly to action. We conduct original research with the aim of informing and impacting legal, policy, and narrative change outcomes. Our research team collaborates closely with the legal and policy team because our research often includes analysis of legal/policy environments, legal or policy recommendations related to our findings, and an advocacy plan for how we will make the research actionable ourselves or help advocates, policymakers, providers, scholars or community members use it in their work. We conduct research on our own but often in collaboration with others at UCLA, the UC system, and researchers, scholars, organizations, and coalitions across the nation.
The Center is also a hub for information sharing amongst reproductive health researchers, researchers and advocates, and for translating and connecting research and researchers to policymakers and courts. We regularly convene researchers with advocates and people from other disciplines and fields to maximize strategy, communication, and relationship building that will inform reproductive health and justice research and advocacy. We also create specific tools to enhance communication between researchers, advocates, and policy makers such as a regular research roundup.
For more information about the Center and its goals, please visit: https://law.ucla.edu/academics/centers/center-reproductive-health-law-and-policy
The Research Director Role
Vision and Strategy. The Research Director will play a significant role in building and diversifying the Center’s research agenda and ensure it is making an impact on the most important reproductive health and justice topics today. The Research Director, in collaboration with the Legal and Policy Director, will drive the Center’s strategy and vision on what kind of research-related activities, collaborations, and convenings will have the greatest impact on public thinking, policy, and narrative. The Research Director should have an interest in and be able to conceptualize impactful research projects in core reproductive health areas such as abortion and contraception but also related to policies and practices that help people have healthy pregnancies, build families, and support economic justice for families.
Research and Research Products. The Research Director will lead and conduct research projects and should be skilled in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research. The Research Director will often be the Principal Investigator (PI) on research projects that involve only Center staff and sometimes PI or co-PI on research projects that involve collaboration with people in other departments, institutions, or organizations. The Research Director will produce research for reports, policy white papers, fact sheets, op-eds, blogs, or other writing to influence law, policy, or narrative change, and sometimes also publication in peer-reviewed journals. At the outset, the Research Director will both develop new research projects and lead or supervise some existing projects in the areas of abortion access, unconditional direct cash transfer programs for pregnant people, and young people’s reproductive health care access.
Strategic Partnership and Collaboration. The Research Director will help fulfill the Center’s role to be a hub, connector, and amplifier for other people’s research and linking researchers, advocates, policy makers, providers, and scholars. The Research Director will build and maintain robust relationships with reproductive health and justice advocates, scholars, providers, and policy makers across the nation, and nurture certain existing research partnerships we already have. The Research Director will also work effectively with the vibrant network of people who are working to advance reproductive health and justice research and policy across UCLA and the UC system, and will maximize the intersectional and interdisciplinary nature of the Center’s goals to collaborate with those working with related movements for LGBTQ justice, economic justice, criminal legal system reform, racial justice, immigrant justice, and democracy reform. The Research Director will also manage and develop new methods of regularly sharing research with advocates, policy makers, and providers through round-ups and other tools.
Research Funding and Research Grant Management. The Research Director will work with the Executive Director to identify funding opportunities for Center research projects and secure research grants or contracts. The Research Director will also work with other Center staff and communicate with other UCLA departments to help manage grant projects, budgets, and grant reporting, as needed.
People and Project Management. The Research Director will supervise the Center’s Research Data Analysts, research fellows, graduate student researchers, and research assistants. The Research Director with be a PI or Co-PI on research projects large and small.
Mentoring and Teaching. The Research Director will have the opportunity to mentor more junior researchers and PhD, Master’s, and undergraduate students who serve as research assistants, fellows, and interns with the Center. The Research Director will also have the opportunity to develop and teach courses, if desired, on reproductive health and justice research and how to use research for legal, policy, and narrative impact. The Center does not currently offer such courses but is open to a Research Director developing such a course or other types of courses for law, public health, public policy or other students at UCLA if that is an area of interest.
The Research Director will report to the Center’s Executive Director. The Research Director will supervise the Research Data Analysts, graduate student researchers, and interns. The Research Director will also collaborate closely with the Center’s Legal and Policy Director, legal/policy team and communications staff to ensure that work is effectively connected to influencing legal and policy perspectives and aligns with the Center’s ultimate goals for impact. The Research Director will also coordinate with other departments at UCLA related to funding and managing research grants.
This is a full-time, year-round, non-tenure track academic position. This appointment is subject to the rules and regulations of the Regents of the University of California, which are mostly embodied in The UCLA CALL and the University of California Academic Personnel Manual. (See https://www.apo.ucla.edu/policies-forms/the-call; and https://www.apo.ucla.edu/policies-forms/apm.) The salary and level of appointment will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. A reasonable estimate for this position is $165,000-180,000.
Qualifications
The minimum requirements for this position include: A doctorate or other terminal degree in a relevant field, at least eight years of social science research experience, and expertise on reproductive health and justice issues.
The successful candidate for this position will ideally have all or many of the following:
• A PhD; As a normal requirement, the appointee should have the terminal or top degree in the appointee’s field, e.g., J.D., Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., or the highest degree that is commonly expected for appointment in the activity.
• An established research record on reproductive rights, health, and justice with a minimum of 8 years of policy-relevant social science research experience;
• Experience using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods;
• A background in research that examines reproductive health and justice intersections with racial justice, economic justice, sexual orientation, gender identity, youth, or system involvement;
• Knowledge of current reproductive health, policy, and justice issues;
• Experience and contacts in the field;
• The ability to devise and implement new research projects for strategic impact;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills;
• The ability to communicate research results to non-expert audiences and in a way that resonates with advocates, policymakers, providers, and community groups;
• Excellent project management skills;
• Experience managing and maintaining effective and happy research teams and partnerships;
• Experience fundraising for research, applying for and obtaining research grants, and managing grant-funded projects.
Application Instructions
Please apply online at https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF09919 by submitting pdf copies of a cover letter, current curriculum vitae, list of publications, and contact information for at least three professional references. Finalists will later be expected to supply at least two letters of recommendation during the final vetting process.