Michelle Talley

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Michelle Talley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker whose main area of focus is working with youth and families as it relates to Public Child Welfare. Other areas of interest are issues dealing with domestic violence, substance use, education, and attachment in youth and families.

As a practicum consultant with the Inter-University Consortium, a collaborative effort of Southern California social work programs that trains social workers in the area of child welfare, Ms. Talley works with first and second-year MSW students placed in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Ms. Talley has also worked as a mental health clinician dealing with children impacted by abuse and neglect within their family nucleus. Most of the children and families worked with were also dealing with substance use/abuse, criminal issues, education, poverty, and mental health issues in which adversely impacted their family dynamics. Ms. Talley has also worked as an adoption social worker with Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. The focus was to locate families and individuals who were interested in providing a permanent home for children in the Child Welfare system.

Brian D. Taylor

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Brian Taylor is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy and a Research Fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.

Professor Taylor’s research centers on transportation policy and planning – most of it conducted in close collaboration with his many exceptional students. His students have won dozens of national awards for their work, and today hold positions at the highest levels of planning analysis, teaching, and practice.

Professor Taylor explores how society pays for transportation systems and how these systems in turn serve the needs of people who – because of low income, disability, location, or age – have lower levels of mobility. Topically, his research examines travel behavior, transportation economics & finance, and politics & planning.

His research on travel behavior has examined (1) the social, economic, and spatial factors explaining public transit use, (2) ways to cost-effectively increase public transit use, (3) how and why travel patterns vary by race/ethnicity, sex, age, and income, (4) the emerging travel patterns teens and young adults, (5) gender divisions of household labor and travel, (6) the effect of travel experience on how people perceive opportunities, (7) the role of walking, waiting, and transferring on travel choices, and (8) the equity implications of new shared mobility systems.

A principal focus of his research is the politics of transportation economics & finance, including (1) alternative ways to evaluate the access and economic effects of traffic congestion on people, firms, and regional economies, (2) the history of freeway planning and finance, (3) emerging trends in pricing road use, (4) the equity of alternative forms of transportation pricing and finance, (5) linking of subsidies to public transit performance, and (6) measuring equity in public transit pricing and finance.

The politics of planning practice inform Professor Taylor’s teaching, which regularly includes courses on Transportation and Land Use: Urban Form, Public Transit and Shared Mobility, Transportation Economics, Finance, and Policy, courses in research design for planners, and, occasionally, the Comparative International Transportation Workshop. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Professor Taylor was a planning faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and before that he was a planner with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some recent publications (current and former student co-authors listed in italics)

Cities, Roads, & Congestion

Taylor, Brian D., Eric A. Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown. 2023. The Drive for Dollars: How Fiscal Politics Shaped Urban Freeways and Transformed American Cities. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 360 pages.

Venegas, Kimberly, Brian D. Taylor, Severin Martinez, and Yu Hong Hwang. 2023. “Take the High (Volume) Road: Analyzing the Safety and Speed Effects of High Traffic Volume Road Diets,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, published online.

Ding, Hao and Brian D. Taylor. 2021. “Traffic Trumps All: Examining the Effect of Traffic Impact Analyses on Urban Housing,” Journal of Planning Literature, published online.

Taylor, Brian D. and Yu Hong Hwang.  2020.  “The Eighty-Five Percent Solution: A Historical Look at Crowdsourcing Speed Limits and the Question of Safety” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,2674(9):  346-357.

Osman, Taner, Trevor Thomas, Andrew Mondschein, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Does Traffic Congestion Influence the Location of New Business Establishments? An Analysis of the San Francisco Bay Area,” Urban Studies, 56(5):  1026-1041.

Thomas, Trevor, Andrew Mondschein, Taner Osman, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Not so fast? Examining neighborhood level effects of traffic congestion on job access,” Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice, 113:  529-541.

Mondschein, Andrew and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Is traffic congestion overrated? Examining the highly variable effects of congestion on travel and accessibility,” Journal of Transport Geography, 64: 65-76.

Public Transit & Shared Mobility

Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian D. Taylor. 2024. “Are immigrants migrating away from transit? Immigrant transit use trends in California.“ Travel Behaviour and Society 36, 100817

Wasserman, Jacob, John Gahbauer, Fariba Siddiq, Hannah King, Hao Ding, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  Financing the Future: Examining the Fiscal Landscape of California Public Transit in the Wake of the Pandemic, Research Report.  Los Angeles:  UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.  98 pages

Gahbauer, John, Jacob L. Wasserman, Juan Matute, Alejandra Rios, and Brian D. Taylor.  2024. “Using a Modified Delphi Approach to Explore California’s Possible Transportation and Land Use Futures,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Wasserman, Jacob and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “State of the BART:  Analyzing the Determinants of Bay Area Rapid Transit Use in the 2010s,” Transportation Research, Part A:  Policy and Practice, 172: 103663.

King, Hannah, Jacob Wasserman, and Brian D. Taylor. 2023. “Terra Incognita:  Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Dai, Tianxing and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Three’s a Crowd? Examining Evolving Public Transit Crowding Standards Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic Public Transport” Public Transport, Published online.

Speroni, Samuel, Brian D. Taylor, and Yu Hong Hwang.  2022.  “Pandemic Transit:  A National Look at the Shock, Adaptation, and Prospects for Recovery,” in Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Transportation Equity

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor. Forthcoming.  “A Gendered Perspective on Ride-Hail Use in Los Angeles, USA,” Transportation Research, Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

Dasmalchi, Eric and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Examining Shifts in the Balance of Riders and Bus Service Before and During the Pandemic in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Findings, April.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Pandemic transit: Examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Transportation, published online.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Arguing over Transportation Sales Taxes: An Analysis of Equity Debates in Transportation Ballot Measures,” Urban Affairs Review, 56(2):  640-670.

Smart, Michael J., Anne Brown, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Sex or Sexuality? Analyzing the Division of Labor and Travel in Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Households,” Travel Behaviour and Society, 6(2017): 75-82.

Taylor, Brian D. and Eric A. Morris. 2015. “Public transportation objectives and rider demographics: Are transit’s priorities poor public policy?” Transportation, 42(2): 347-367.

Transportation, Land Use, & Urban Form

Gahbauer, John, Jacob L. Wasserman, Juan Matute, Alejandra Rios, and Brian D. Taylor.  Forthcoming.  “Using a Modified Delphi Approach to Explore California’s Possible Transportation and Land Use Futures,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Tools of the Trade? Assessing the Progress of Accessibility Measures for Planning Practice,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(4):  497-511.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2021. “Who Lives in Transit-friendly Neighborhoods?  An Analysis of California Neighborhoods over Time,” Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 10:  100341.

Blumenberg, Evelyn, Anne Brown, Kelcie Ralph, Brian D. Taylor, and Carole Turley Voulgaris.  2019.  “A resurgence in urban living? Trends in residential location patterns of young and older adults since 2000,” Urban Geography, 40(9):  1375-1397.

Voulgaris, Carole Turley, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, Anne Brown, and Kelcie Ralph.  2017.  “Synergistic Neighborhood Relationships with Travel Behavior: An Analysis of Travel in 30,000 U.S.  Neighborhoods,” , 10(1):  437-461.

Ralph, Kelcie, Carole Turley Voulgaris, Anne Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2016.  “Millennials, built form, and travel: Insights from a nationwide typology of U.S. neighborhoods,” Journal of Transport Geography, 57: 218–226.

Transportation Policy & Finance

King, Hannah, Jacob Wasserman, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “Terra Incognita: Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board, published online.

Siddiq, Fariba, Jacob Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Samuel Speroni. 2023. “Transit’s Financial Prognosis: Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic” Public Works Management & Policy, 28(4): 393-415.

Siddiq, Fariba, Jacob Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Samuel Speroni.  2023.  “Transit’s Financial Prognosis:  Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Public Works Management & Policy.

King, Hannah, Natalie Amberg, Jacob L. Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs. 2022. “LOST and Found: The Fall and Rise of Local Option Sales Taxes for Transportation in California amidst the Pandemic,” Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Brown, Anne, Jaimee Lederman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2020. “Analyzing voter support for California’s local option sales taxes for transportation,” Transportation, 48:  2103-2125.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Lessons Learned from 40 Years of Local Option Transportation Sales Taxes in California,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2672(4): 13-22.

Travel Behavior

Morris, Eric, Samuel Speroni, and Brian D. Taylor. Forthcoming. “Going Nowhere Faster: Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerate the Trend Toward Staying at Home?” Journal of the American Planning Association.

Morris, Eric A., Samuel Speroni, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “Going Nowhere Fast:  Are Changing Activity Patterns Behind Falling Personal Travel?” Journal of Transport Geography, published online.

Manville, Michael, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Andrew Schouten.  2022.  “Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California,” Transportation, published online.

Schouten, Andrew, Brian D. Taylor, and Evelyn Blumenberg.  2021. “Who’s on Board?  Examining the Changing Characteristics of Transit Riders Using Latent Profile Analysis,” ,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2675(7):  1-10.

Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Rating the Composition: Deconstructing the Demand-Side Effects on Transit Use Changes in California,” Travel Behaviour & Society, 25:  18-26.

Turley, Carole Voulgaris, Michael J. Smart, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Tired of Commuting? Relationships among Journeys to School, Sleep, and Exercise among American Teenagers,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(2):  142-154.

 

Chris Tilly

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Chris Tilly studies labor markets, inequality, urban development, and public policies directed toward better jobs.

He is particularly interested in understanding how combinations of institutions and markets generate unequal labor outcomes, and in how public policy and collective action can successfully be directed toward improving and equalizing such outcomes. Within this framework, Professor Tilly has examined part-time and contingent work, gender and racial disparities, job mobility, and other issues.

While continuing to conduct research on workplace issues in the United States, Professor Tilly has increasingly undertaken comparative research on countries including Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa, along with several European countries.  His areas of greatest expertise are the United States, Mexico, and Latin America.

In addition to conducting scholarly research, he served for 20 years (1986-2006) as a coeditor of Dollars and Sense, a popular economics magazine, and frequently conducts research for advocacy groups, community organizations, and labor unions. He served on the Program Committee and later the Board of Directors of Grassroots International from 1991-2003, ending that time as the Chair of the Board.

Before becoming an academic, he spent eight years doing community and labor organizing.

For more about Tilly’s current research, view his web page.

Abel Valenzuela

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Abel Valenzuela Jr. is the interim dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences and professor of Labor Studies, Urban Planning and Chicana/o and Central American Studies. A member of UCLA’s faculty since 1994, Valenzuela has held several administrative leadership positions including chairing Chicana/o and Central American Studies, directing the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty and most recently serving as special advisor to the chancellor on immigration policy and as director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).

During his tenure as director of IRLE, Valenzuela oversaw multiple units: Labor Studies, the Labor Center, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) and the Human Resources Round Table (HARRT), which are dedicated to advancing research, teaching and service on labor and employment issues in Los Angeles and beyond.

As one of the leading national experts on day labor, he has published numerous articles and technical reports on the subject. His research interests include precarious labor markets, worker centers, immigrant workers and Los Angeles.

In addition to the topic of day labor, Valenzuela has published numerous articles on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality, and he continues to frame national public and policy conversations on immigrant and low-wage workers.

Valenzuela was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Venice Beach with his wife and three sons.

 

Selected Publications

Paul Apostolidis and Abel Valenzuela Jr.  2014.  “Cosmopolitan Politics and the Migrant Day Labor Movement.”  Politics, Groups, and Identities.  Vol. 2(2):222-244.

Valenzuela Jr., A.  2014.  “Regulating Day Labor: Worker Centers and Organizing in the Informal Economy.”  In The Informal City: Settings, Strategies, Responses (Eds) Vinit Mukhija and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sidris.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press.  Pgs 261-276.

Bostic, R.W., A. M. Kim, and A. Valenzuela Jr. 2016.  Guest Co-editors.  Symposium: Contesting the Streets.  Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. Volume 18, Number 1: Pgs, 3-122.

Theodore, N., D. Blaauw, C. Schenck, A. Valenzuela Jr., C. Schoeman, E. Melendez.  2015.  “Day Labor, Informality and Vulnerability in South Africa and the United States.”  International Journal of Manpower.  Vol. 36 No. 6: 1-18.

Areas of Expertise: economy, jobs low-wage workers, day labor, immigration, urban poverty, urban planning, inequality

Meredith Phillips

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Phillips studies the causes and consequences of educational inequality. She specializes in the causes of ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in educational success and how to reduce those disparities. Her current research projects focus on promising practices for improving students’ math achievement; the impact of math course-taking on students’ academic achievement and educational attainment; and survey methods involving children and adolescents.

Phillips co-founded EdBoost, a charitable, educational non-profit whose mission is to reduce educational inequality by making high-quality supplemental educational services accessible to children from all family backgrounds. Phillips also co-founded the Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI), a Los Angeles-based research-practice partnership that collaborates with L.A Unified.

Phillips served on the National Academy Committee on Developing Indicators of Educational Equity and the National Academy Committee on the Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education. She is a past recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, as well as the dissertation award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and her A.B. from Brown University.

Google Scholar Citations

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Leaks in the College Access Pipeline: Examining Summer Melt in a Large Urban School District
Author: Miller, Carrie E., Meredith Phillips, Caitlin E. Ahearn

Does Virtual Advising Increase College Enrollment? Evidence from a Random-Assignment College Access Field Experiment
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Sarah Reber

Using Research to Improve College Readiness: A Research Partnership between the Los Angeles Unified School District and and the Los Angeles Education Research Institute
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Kyo Yamashiro, Adina Farrukh, Cynthia Lim, Katherine Hayes, Nicole Wagner, Hansheng Chen

Parenting, Time Use, and Disparities in Academic Outcomes
Author: Phillips, Meredith

Ethnic and Social Class Disparities in Academic Skills: Their Origins and Consequences
Author: Phillips, Meredith

Culture and Stalled Progress in Narrowing the Black-White Test Score Gap
Author: Phillips, Meredith

How Did the Statewide Assessment and Accountability Policies of the 1990s Affect Instructional Quality in Low-Income Elementary Schools?
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Jennifer Flashman

Social Reproduction and Child-rearing Practices:  Social Class, Children’s Agency, and the Summer Activity Gap in Low-Income Elementary Schools
Author: Chin, Tiffani, Meredith Phillips

School Inequality:  What Do We Know?
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Tiffani Chin

The Black-White Test Score Gap
Editor: Jencks, Christopher, Meredith Phillips

SELECTED REPORTS

Twelfth Grade Math and College Success
Author: Wainstein, Leonard, Carrie Miller, Meredith Phillips, Kyo Yamashiro, Tatiana Melguizo

Twelfth Grade Math and College Access
Author: Wainstein, Leonard, Carrie Miller, Meredith Phillips, Kyo Yamashiro, Tatiana Melguizo

College Going in LAUSD: An Analysis of College Enrollment, https://laeri.luskin.ucla.edu/12thgrademathandcollegesuccess/ersistence, and Completion Patterns
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Kyo Yamashiro, Thomas A. Jacobson

College Readiness Supports in LAUSD High Schools: A First Look
Author: Phillips, Meredith, Kyo Yamashiro, Carrie E. Miller

Carol Goldstein

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Carol Goldstein is involved with planning and program development for cultural and human services as they intersect with land use, neighborhood economic development and community identity.

A former principal planner for the Community Redevelopment Agency in Los Angeles, she is a consultant to the public sector, non-profits and advocacy groups in communities throughout the U.S.

Professor Goldstein also is a faculty advisor for Cultivate LA, a research project that assesses the state of urban agriculture in Los Angeles. The project has won the APA California Chapter Award, as well as the APA Los Angeles Award.

At UCLA, Ms. Goldstein teaches physical planning courses and student client project courses for non-profit and public sector clients. Examples include:

“Cultivate L.A.: An Assessment of Urban Agriculture in Los Angeles County” for the University of California Cooperative Extension- LA (American Planning Association L A Chapter Student Project Award, 2014)

“Affirming Neighborhoods: Responsive Neighborhood Cultural Planning” for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department (American Planning Association National Student Project Award, 1992)

“Elysian Park: New Strategies for Preservation of Historic Open Space Resources” for the Citizens’ Committee To Save Elysian Park (Los Angeles Conservancy Award, 1991 and California Preservation Foundation Award, 1991)

“Realizing a Community Dream: The Diverse Cultural Resources of the Anaheim Corridor” for the Public Corporation for the Arts/Long Beach Regional Arts Council (1995).

Susanna Hecht

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Dr. Hecht’s research focuses on the intersections of economies, cultures and land use, and the socio-environmental effects of these processes, an approach now widely known as political ecology.

Her focus area is the Latin American tropics, and more specifically Amazonia. Her research has major implications for understanding the dynamics of land use change and what they imply about human relations with nature, economies and tropical development. Her work includes analytics on climate change, mitigation and longer-term rethinking of longer-term strategies under globalization, intense migration and novel climate dynamics.

Her work has forged new understandings in the development of political ecology including that of deforestation and forest recovery, the “social lives of forests” as part of environmental history as well as current practices. These include the analysis and viability of traditional tropical land use practices such as agroforestry and the creation of Amazonian black earths (a legacy of and continuing practice by many indigenous populations as well as Amazon peasants). Her early work on indigenous anthropogenic soils was groundbreaking, as it documented how in fact these soils, the product of biochar–and low temperature fires— were produced. She also studies the impacts of migration on forest and land use. In addition to these more arcane systems, she has carried out extensive research on the livestock sector, analyzed in her book Fate of the Forest, and soy economies in Latin America (the main deforestation drivers) and has just edited a major themed issue on this topic for the Journal of Peasant Studies, the top ranked rural development journal.

Dr. Hecht’s interest in alternatives to deforestation involved engagement in the analytics of non-timber forest products and their development, including extractive reserves, which now cover more than 10 million Ha in the Amazon Basin and reflect the outcome of new institutions under the pressure of social movements of traditional peoples of various kinds. She has also paid attention to the gender implications that inhere in land use change from the most remote peasantries in the upper Amazon, to highly linked in central American women farmers whose family members reside in the US.

Forest resurgence in the tropics is now a widely documented phenomena but her work in this area more than a decade ago was landmark.

Through complex analyses that range from Forest transition theory, global markets, agrocecology and the foucauldian politics of governmentality, the widespread occurrence of forest recovery suggests a huge realm of new policy interventions and practices for this largely orphaned segment of forest dynamics. These questions are explored in two of her edited books. The Social Lives of forests, edited with ethnobotanist Christine Padoch and ethnoarcheologist Kathleen Morrison explored the ideologies, environmental histories, and current practices and processes that produced forests in the present day and in the past. Under current conditions forest recovery and control of clearing will be essential to any climate policy. This book thus shows how a complex range of activities—using global examples from the top scholars in a range of disciplines — have produced both livelihoods and forested landscapes. Another edited volume explored the questions of migration, resources and rural livelihoods with colleagues from the Central American policy and research NGO, PRISMA setting the stage for continuing research on the dynamics of migration. urbanization and land use, and their implications for forests and forest dependent populations.

Finally, her research focuses on historical ecology and environmental economics. Her book, The Scramble for the Amazon, won the American Historical associations Best Book in Environmental history Award in 2015, and her earlier volume, Fate of the Forest also won multiple awards. The key to these books is their use of the “natural archive” as well as the human one. Dr. Hecht’s rigorous historiography and scientific training coupled to rich and fluid prose have made her books academic best sellers. She is at work on the third volume for this trilogy on contemporary Amazonia

Using archival research, remote sensing, palynological data and forest census materials Dr. Hecht has been engaged in the analysis of “Deforestation” before modern Deforestation: that is understanding the nature and social dynamics of forest change over time including carbon loss and uptake in Amazonian ecosystems 100 years ago. These researches feed into an understanding of landuse change under current regional development scenarios and most especially the questions of the global carbon economy.

Dr. Hecht’s work has been funded by NSF, NASA, MacArthur Foundation, ACLS, Guggenheim, Ford Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, National Geographic Society, Shelby Cullom David fellowships and the Institute for Advanced studies and CASBS among many other sources. Her work has also received generous funding from UCLA’s Latin American Institute, The Global Public Affairs Program, the UCLA Academic Senate and the University of California Office of the President.

Dr. Hecht is a member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and holds a Professorial appointment at the Graduate Institute for Development Studies in Geneva.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Social Lives of Forests
Subtitle: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence
Publisher’s webpage
Review in Science

The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha
University of Chicago Press.
Purchase on Amazon.com
Reviewed in The Nation

The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon
Purchase on Amazon.com

Jorja Leap

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Jorja Leap has been a member of the Social Welfare Department faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs since 1992 and serves as the Executive Director of the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership. As a social worker/anthropologist and recognized expert in gangs, violence, and systems change, she develops, coordinates and directs real-life scholarly efforts that involve research, evaluation and policy recommendations at the local, state and national level. Dr. Leap has worked nationally as well as globally in post-war environments and settings beset by violence throughout her career, applying a multi-disciplinary, community-based approach to her research and capacity building efforts. Her current work focuses on gangs and community justice in multi-cultural settings, criminal justice and prison reform, and the dilemmas faced by individuals reentering society after incarceration, including women, a group often overlooked.

Dr. Leap has served as policy advisor on Gangs and Youth Violence for Los Angeles County, as an expert reviewer on gangs for the National Institute of Justice, and as the Clinical Director of the Watts Regional Strategy for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office.  In addition, she has worked as the qualitative research director for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Gang Reduction Youth Development (GRYD) Program.  She has also been appointed to the State of California, Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), Standing Committee on Gang Issues. Through work she has engaged at the national level, she is now the Evaluation and Research Director for the Community Based Public Safety Collective.

Alongside these efforts, she has served as an expert witness in local, state ,and federal judicial proceedings, focusing on gangs, violence, and the relationships between trauma and criminalized behaviors. Additionally, Dr. Leap has authored a series of reports on gang membership, dynamics, and desistance in death penalty sentencing and plea mitigation procedures, appeals, habeas corpus hearings, and clemency proceedings.  Dr. Leap works to educate the court in understanding the nuances of gang activity and the trauma that underlies so much of its commission.  She continues to provide commentary on numerous television, radio and newspaper stories about gangs.

Currently, Dr. Leap is the lead researcher for the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. Additionally, she is engaged in a five year, longitudinal evaluation of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang reentry program in the world, integrating UCLA undergraduate and graduate students in this ground-breaking research. She is the co-founder of the UCLA Watts Leadership Institute, working closely with the community-based leaders of Watts as well as its nonprofit network to build capacity and ensure equity in the vibrant community she is honored to be part of.  Dr. Leap has authored numerous reports, chapters, and books, including Jumped In: What Gangs taught me about Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption with all proceeds going to Homeboy Industries and Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in one of America’s Toughest Communities with all the proceeds going to Project Fatherhood.  Her latest book Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for their Place, their Children and their Futures after Incarceration was published in 2022, with all proceeds going to Susan Burton and the A New Way of Life Reentry Program.    

 

Learn more about Dr. Leap’s work.

 

Downloads and other links:

Alternative Strategies to Reduce Gang Violence
Gangster Anthropologist
L.A. County Must Reform Outdated, Harmful Youth Probation Camp System
Successful Gang and Violence Prevention Strategies – Minority News
Gang Alternative Movement Gains Momentum – Discovery News
Behind the scenes with the gang strike force

 

Barbara J. Nelson

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Barbara J. Nelson is Dean Emerita of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Professor Emerita of its Public Policy Department. She is the Founder of The Concord Project, which builds bridging social capital that allows people from divided communities to work together on projects of mutual benefit. While Dean she was a member of the UCLA Chancellor’s Executive Committee and Chair of the Council of Professional School Deans. Prior to her appointment as Dean, she was Vice President and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Radcliffe College (now at Harvard) where her portfolio included all academic programs and strategic planning

Prof. Nelson’s fields of expertise divide into two arenas: social and organizational processes including strategic decision making, conflict mediation, multi-stakeholder decision making, and leadership; and policy topics including social policy, nonprofits, philanthropy, and disability issues. Her research and policy work includes comparing crisis decision making between the British Fighter Command and the German High Command in the WWII Battle of Britain, which will be available in The Most Dangerous Summer. Similarly, Dr. Nelson researches contemporary strategic decision making by American philanthropic foundations. She is also writing a series of linked essays Falling Off the Edge of World: Disability at Mid-Life.

Dr. Nelson is the author of six books and over 85 articles, book chapters, and cases. Leadership and Diversity: A Case Book (2004) demonstrates how linking leadership and diversity improves policy education and policy making. The Concord Handbook: How to Build Social Capital Across Communities (with Linda Kaboolian and Kathryn A. Carver, 2003) provides the ideas and best practices for starting and sustaining organizations that successfully bring together people from groups with historic conflicts. Nelson and co-author Najma Chowdhury won the 1995 Victoria Schuck Award for Women and Politics Worldwide, bestowed by the American Political Science Association for the best book in the field of women and politics. In 1989, Nelson and historian Sara Evans won the Policy Studies Organization’s prize for the best book in the field of policy analysis for Wage Justice: Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic Reform. Nelson is the author of Making an Issue of Child Abuse: Political Agenda Setting for Social Problems (1984) and American Women and Politics (1984).

Barbara Nelson has worked or done research in over 25 countries, and has made major contributions to policy making and civic life in the United States and abroad. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the UCLA Williams Institute, a legal and policy research center promoting LGBT rights and opportunities. She contributes to the Huffington Post on social equality and cultural issues.

Dr. Nelson’s civic contributions included Co-Chairing of the U.S. National Commission to Reduce Infant Mortality and serving on the board of the Greater Los Angeles United Way. She is a former board member Radcliffe College and its Executive and Investment Committees, the American Political Science Association and its Investment Committee, the National Council for Research on Women, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and UCLA Hillel. She was a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Prof. Nelson was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and has held visiting fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Villa Serbelloni , the Russell Sage Foundation, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the USC Price School of Public Policy.

Before her appointment at Radcliffe, Barbara Nelson served on the faculties of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where she was the founder and director of the Center on Women and Public Policy. She earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science at Ohio State University, where she was elected to Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honorary society.

Aaron Panofsky

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Aaron Panofsky is a Professor in Public Policy and the Institute for Society and Genetics. Prior to joining UCLA in January of 2008, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at UC Berkeley from 2006 through 2007. Panofsky received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 2006.

Panofsky’s main research interest is in the sociology of science and knowledge with a special focus on genetics. He recently published his first book, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago, 2014), is an analysis of the causes and consequences of controversy in the field of behavioral genetics. A second major project is investigating how patient advocate groups are seeking to affect the research process in the medical genetics of rare disorders. Of particular interest are the means by which patient advocates and scientists can form successful, mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships. These and other projects fit with his abiding science policy interests in the governance of science and technology and the relationship between expertise and democracy.

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