Dear IRLE Community,
Please join us for our final campus visit for the position of UCLA Labor Center Director. Each applicant will give a talk and lead a conversation on their vision for the future of the Labor Center. We encourage staff, community members, and affiliated faculty to join us and provide feedback on each candidate.
This provides our community the opportunity to interact with prospective applicants and truly get a sense of what each applicant envisions should they be selected as the next Labor Center Director. The public talks will be thirty minutes long, followed by thirty-minute Q&A sessions. We hope you consider joining us next week for our third and final public talk. RSVP details are listed below:
Friday, Oct. 6, 2023 Location:
10:00 am – Check-In and Reception
10:30 am – Public Talk Begins
11:00 am – Q&A
11:30 am – Community and Board Members Engagement
Location:
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA Campus
337 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Room 4320
Live Zoom Option:
Meeting ID: 993 1343 5211
Passcode: 793481
Saba Waheed on How Research and Narrative Change Can Advance Worker Movements
Saba Waheed is Research Director at the UCLA Labor Center. She has over twenty years of research experience developing projects with strong community participation. With her team at the UCLA Labor Center, she coordinated the first-ever study of domestic work employers, launched a multi-year study of workers and learners, and conducted research on the impact of the pandemic on nail salon workers and owners. She has also conducted research related to gig workers, young workers, Black workers, LGBTQ+ grocery workers and retail workers. Saba teaches the Labor Summer Research Program, guiding students through an applied research project. Previously she worked as the Research Director at DataCenter where she co-developed the “research justice” framework which aims to address the structural inequities embedded in traditional research methods. In addition to her research work, Saba is an award-winning writer and co-produces the podcast Re:Work. Saba strongly believes that research and media are powerful tools for community storytelling. She received an MA in Anthropology from Columbia University and a BA in English and Religious Studies from UC Berkeley.
Saba Waheed’s talk will trace her contributions in research justice and narrative change and how these areas align with the UCLA Labor Center’s aim to expand its research capacity, storytelling, and school-to-movement pipeline. The talk will pay particular attention to how participatory methods and teaching tools, like popular education, position workers as creators of knowledge and advocates of their own working conditions. Such approaches are a core feature of the Labor Center’s critical engagement with immigrant and worker communities and collectively shape research policy, action agendas, and recommendations for worker and social movements across multiple scales. The talk will also detail her vision for the Labor Center: to implement and amplify research and leadership programs in academic and other public spaces; to support staff development and equity; to build strong and transparent structures; and to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the organization. This vision is rooted in the value of collaborative methods of engagement with staff, the IRLE, and faculty, alongside our union, community, and student partners. Last, the talk will be grounded in the Labor Center’s mission that recognizes how the university serves public interest needs and leverages resources to improve the lives of immigrants, working people, those locked out of the workforce, and our student base.
