Publicly Engaged Research Lab

Principal Investigator (PI): Kim Yi Dionne

DPERL includes both graduate and undergraduate students supporting research examining democracy, health, and development, with a focus on public opinion and political behavior in African countries.

Academic Fields: Comparative Politics, Political Mass Behavior, Interdisciplinary

You can check out more about their lab at https://sites.google.com/ucr.edu/dperl/

The Laboratory for Technology, Communication, and Democracy (TeCD-Lab)

Principal Investigator (PI): Kevin M. Esterling

The Laboratory for Technology, Communication and Democracy (TeCD-Lab) was founded in 2019 to design and develop communication technology that makes democracy more robust, responsive, and resilient. The TeCD-Lab's mission is to solve the problem of communication at the scale of modern democracy by developing technology that can give individuals a direct voice in policymaking, and elected officials insights into the considered opinions of their constituents.

Academic Fields: Political Mass Behavior, Computer Science and Data Science

The TeCD-Lab is building Prytaneum, an online public meeting platform. Please visit https://prytaneum.io/

Identity Politics Lab

Principal Investigator (PI): Jennifer Merolla

We explore the ways in which identity influences political attitudes and behavior.

Academic Fields: Political Mass Behavior

The Transnational Labor Alliances Database Project (TLA Project)

Principal Investigator (PI): Marissa Brookes

Transnational labor alliance (TLA) campaigns have been the subject of sustained scholarly inquiry for more than two decades. Nevertheless, little is known about the overall characteristics of TLA campaigns in general, in part because the full population of cases remains unknown. The Transnational Labor Alliances Database Project thus serves as an archive of primary and secondary documents and researcher-assembled case summaries created by the author over eight years, with the help of over 120 undergraduate research assistants. The data collected assists in the development of a typology of TLAs across at least five key dimensions: who the main actors were; what the workers wanted; where the campaign occurred; why the TLA formed in the first place; and how strategies and tactics were deployed. The data has been and will continue to be used to systematically investigate the causes of success and failure in TLA campaigns, among other research questions.

Advanced undergraduates are encouraged to apply to volunteer or work in the lab for course credit. Please visit the Undergraduate Research Portal for details: https://engage.ucr.edu/research/portal

Academic Fields: International Relations, Comparative Politics, Interdisciplinary

UCR LIFTED Prison Education Initiative

Principal Investigator (PI): Farah Godrej, a Co-Founding Director.

UCR LIFTED (Leveraging Inspired Futures through Educational Degrees) is a ground-breaking initiative which will award UCR bachelor's degrees to incarcerated transfer students with community college degrees, bringing UCR faculty inside the prison to teach students in-person courses on a BA degree pathway. LIFTED will launch in the fall of 2024. 32 students incarcerated at California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) in Norco have been admitted to UCR's inaugural cohort, with plans to admit a new cohort each subsequent year. Further information can be found on the website: https://education.ucr.edu/lifted, or by contacting the PI at godrej@ucr.edu.

UCR LIFTED is an interdisciplinary, cross-campus collaboration: the major offered will be Education, Society and Human Development, with approximately half the courses being offered by School of Education faculty, and the other half by faculty from other schools and colleges, the vast majority from CHASS. All UCR faculty will teach courses to incarcerated students inside the prison in-person. The first cohort will graduate in the spring of 2026 with a UCR Bachelor's degree, with subsequent cohorts scheduled to graduate each subsequent year. The classes offered will be the very same courses offered on campus. The Co-Founding Directors who have spearheaded and concretized the initiative come from the School of Education and the Department of Political Science in CHASS.

Academic Subfields: Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary