The Policy Lab/Lowe Institute 2025 Summer Research Associates Program
The CMC Policy Lab is now accepting applications for the 2025 Summer Research Associates program. The program will hire up to eight students to work on one of two projects:
The first project is on the impact of post-Elkins family law reforms—which were designed to increase access for low-income litigants—using data from the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC). This project will assess how changes in court procedures, legal representation, and custody order structures have influenced the durability of family law judgments and access to justice for litigants. Fellows will work with court data, utilize AI tools for document analysis, and contribute to research on how procedural reforms affect judicial efficiency and family outcomes.
The second project will analyze the effect on voting behavior in states that expanded voting access during the 2020 pandemic, and then subsequently reversed this expansion. Working with administrative voter data, this group will identify states that expanded and then reversed vote access, and attempt to measure the effects of these changes on the likelihood of voting. In addition to conducting research on state elections laws and elections policy, this project will utilize high-performance computing (HPC) and large datasets.
Duties
Summer Research Associates will work individually in and groups on qualitative and quantitative policy research, analysis, visualizations, and memo writing. Students will be expected to attend staff meetings, regularly coordinate with faculty supervisors between staff meetings, and interface with project partners via phone, email, and video conference. All program work will be performed remotely and will not require travel.
Qualifications
Strong oral and written communication skills, and some previous experience with policy research, either in an academic or professional setting, is required. Preference will also be given to students who have not participated in the previous summer associates program. Candidates should highlight policy writing experience; courses taken in statistics, political methodology, or econometrics; or a proficiency with R, Stata, Tableau, or Python. While it is not required that Summer Research Associates have taken the Policy Lab course, students who have not will be required to participate in an orientation before the start of the program.
Details
The program will run for eight weeks from May 19 through July 11. Associates will receive a $2,500 stipend, paid in two installments, with an expectation of half-time weekly work. All associates must be available for all regular weekly meetings and regular staff communications throughout the program.
To apply please send a cover letter, resume, and transcript to Tami DeSalvio by 5p PDT on Wednesday, April 11.
