Book Talk: Jonathan Rosenblum on How Socialists Win, In Conversation with Robin D.G. Kelley
2026-04-29 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 314
Book Talk: Jonathan Rosenblum on How Socialists Win
In Conversation with Robin D.G. Kelley
Veteran labor organizer and journalist Jonathan Rosenblum discusses his new book, We’re Coming For You and Your Rotten System: How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics, an insider’s account of Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant and the successful movement she led against corporate power and compromising labor leaders. An inspiring lesson for building worker power.
Date: April 29, 2026 @ 4 P.M.
Location: Royce Hall 314

May Day March
2026-05-01 10:00 - 15:00
Date: Friday, May 1st
Time: 10 AM
Location: MacArthur Park
This May 1st, join us at MacArthur Park at 10 AM and march alongside workers from every sector, trade, and craft.
This year’s message is clear: Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo. Come out and be part of LA’s annual May Day march! 📢
Students — we’re working on a bus from UCLA to MacArthur Park and back, plus a teach-in and poster-making session before the march. More details coming soon.

Labor Studies NOW Presents: Book Panel on Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest
2026-05-14 12:00 - 14:00
Profs. Jennifer Jihye Chun (UCLA) and Ju Hui Judy Han (UCLA) joined by Prof. Tobias Higbie (UCLA), Prof. Jong Bum Kwon (Webster University), Prof. Hannah Appel (UCLA), and Prof. Zeynep Korkman (UCLA)

Thursday, May 14, 2026
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Bunche Hall, Room 10383
RSVP HERE!

About the Book
Against Abandonment: Repertoire of Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University Press, 2025) offers insight into the utility and futility of protesting precarity under neoliberal capitalism. Based on long-term ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with key labor and social movement activists, the book follows the protests of minoritized workers, especially women employed in precarious jobs, as they contend with what it means to be treated as disposable and what it takes to resist. Long-term protest camps, life-threatening hunger strikes, grueling prostrations, perilous high-altitude occupations are agonizing to perform and to witness but often powerful as affective catalyst of change. Through dramatic performances and rituals that repeat across time and space, Against Abandonment finds that protesters cultivate repertoires of solidarity as a relational force that binds people and worlds together in a collective praxis of refusal. In doing so, Against Abandonment builds upon intersectional, transnational, and abolitionist feminist theorizing that has long emphasized the centrality of building relations of care and community in place-based struggles against capitalist abandonment.
Moderated by Tobias Higbie, Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at UCLA, it will begin with brief comments by Jennifer Jihye Chun (Asian America Studies at UCLA) and Ju Hui Judy Han (Gender Studies at UCLA), which will be followed by an open ended dialogue among panelists, with Jong Bum Kwon (Webster University), Hannah Appel (Anthropology at UCLA), and Zeynep Korkman (Gender Studies at UCLA).
Discussion
Moderated by Prof. Tobias Higbie, Dept. of History, UCLA

Hannah Appel is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies and Associate Faculty Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. She is the author of The Licit Life of Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019) and cp-founder and organizer with the Debt Collective. She is also author of the forthcoming book Debtors Unions: Countervailing Power and Abolitionist Presence in the Age of Finance and co-author of Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition (Blackstone Publishing, 2020).
Jennifer Jihye Chun is Professor of Asian American Studies and Labor Studies at UCLA. She is the author of Organizing at the Margins: the Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States (ILR Press, 2009) and co-author of Against Abandonment: Repertoires Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University, 2025). She is interim Chair of the Department of Labor Studies and has a faculty teaching appointment in the International Institute.
Ju Hui Judy Han is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at UCLA. Han is the author of Queer Throughlines: Space of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2025) and co-author of Against Abandonment: Repertoires Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University, 2025). She is currently working on a decolonial travel guide to Korea and a new project on the “feminist take” on contemporary cultural politics.
Tobias Higbie is Professor of history and Labor Studies and the Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at UCLA. He is a labor historian whose research explores the intersection of work, migration, and social movement organizing in the United States. He is the author of Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2003) and Labor’s Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Life (University of Illinois Press, 2019).
Zeynep Korkman is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA. Her research explores the gendered relationships between affect, labor, religion, and transnational feminist politics, with a focus on Turkey and the broader Middle East. She is the author of Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey (Duke University Press, 2023). Her ongoing research investigates the affective and laborious contents and discontents of transnational feminist solidarity.
Jong Bum Kwon is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Webster University. His research interests include cultural anthropology, urban studies, globalization, race and ethnicity, ethnographic methods, with a focus on contemporary Korean labor and capitalism and Asians in America. His current research project focus on the dilemma of whiteness in St. Louis, Missouri, in the wake of the Ferguson Uprising and Black youth’s aspirations and social mobility in the time of BLM and white nativism.

2026 Labor@UCLA Research Showcase
2026-05-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Public Affairs 1323 & Zoom
Date: May 22nd
Time: 1-3 P.M.
Location: Public Affairs 1323 & Zoom
RSVP HERE!
We are excited to announce our 4th annual Labor@UCLA Research Showcase – Friday, May 22nd, 2026 from 1-3 pm in-person at Public Affairs 1323 and via zoom! This event is part of Undergraduate Research Week. Undergraduate Research Week is a week-long celebration of undergraduate research and creative inquiry at UCLA. Students from all disciplines gather to share their innovative and impactful work with the UCLA community at events such as the Undergraduate Research & Creativity Showcase.
Now in its 28th year, Undergraduate Research Week, which will be held May 18-22, 2026, is UCLA’s largest undergraduate conference. Labor Studies is an interdisciplinary program of study, which critically analyzes the theory and practice of current workplace issues. Students develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between their education and society at large and how they, as college graduates, can transform the nature of work. Students who were selected will be presenting on past or current work developed for a capstone, honors theses, or other Labor Studies and related classes (both approved and related). Lunch will be provided for in-person attendance.
If you have any questions, please feel free to follow-up with Elizbeth Espinoza, espinoza@irle.ucla.edu.

Building a Career in the Labor Movement Panel
2026-05-27 12:30 - 13:30 | Rolfe Hall 3129
Building a Career in the Labor Movement Panel
Join us for a Labor Career Panel featuring speakers working across advocacy, hospitality organizing, immigration, and the labor movement, including one speaker currently pursuing graduate studies. Learn about their professional journeys, experiences in and beyond graduate school, and the different paths they’ve taken to build careers connected to social justice and labor.
Date: Wednesday, May 27th
Time: 12:30 – 1:30
Location: Rolfe Hall 3129
RSVP HERE!
Speakers include Sheheryar Kaoosji (Executive Director at Warehouse Workers Resource Center), Jessica Durrum (Director of LAANE’s hospitality campaign), and Adriana Ramirez (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley).

The Past, Present, and Future of Jews and the Labor Movement in Los Angeles
2026-05-28 17:30 - 20:00 | UCLA Labor Center
Thursday, May 28, 2026 • UCLA Labor Center • 5:30 PM
675 S Park View Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057
What drew Jewish immigrants to the labor movement? How did unions become distinctly “Jewish” spaces — and what happened when they changed? Join historians, organizers, and community leaders for a panel on Jewish labor activism in Los Angeles: from the open-shop battles of the early 20th century to today.
Featuring:
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen (Professor, American Jewish University)
Kathy Finn (President, UFCW Local 770)
Jackie Goldberg (retired educator and elected official)
Leora Swerdlow (Associate, Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers LLP)
RSVP HERE!
Sponsored by The UCLA Department of Labor Studies, the UCLA Labor Center, the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles, the Jewish Labor Committee, LA Voice, UFCW Local 770 and UNITE HERE Local 11.

UCLA Coding Bootcamp for Union Research
2026-06-08 - 2026-06-12
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab will hold a five-day intensive training in using the power of Python coding to simplify tasks for union research. The camp will be held from June 8-12, 2026, and applications will open in late February.
Applications for Coding Bootcamp are now live!
The Coding Bootcamp is an intense and challenging experience! Come ready to jump feet first into a weeklong journey towards simplifying your work, discovering new data sources, and automating your most routine research tasks!
Key Training Topics:

Python fundamentals
Dynamically moving and combining multiple files
Fuzzy matching different data sets
Use APIs to bulk download data, such as open government data
Scraping websites to collect data, such as:

property listings,
company information,
government data,
pdfs, and
data sets that cannot be downloaded directly

Cleaning, merging, and deduplicating data such as worker lists, property records, or company information
Using text patterns to extract data

Who should apply
This course is designed for union or movement researchers that often encounter large amounts of data in the course of their work. The skills taught in this course will allow students to collect, process, and analyze data more efficiently and accurately.
This course does not cover topics such as databases (i.e. SQL), advanced data analysis (i.e. statistics and data modeling), machine learning, or extracting text from PDFs–these are advanced topics that cannot be covered in the time we have, but students will have a solid Python foundation and can work on self-teaching these topics after the course.
Prior coding experience is not required to attend this course. However, all accepted students must participate in a short, self-paced python pre-course. We will also cover Python fundamentals together in class.

Advice From the 2025 Coding Bootcamp Cohort:
“You should definitely attend this program if you’re thinking about it! This program really helps make coding feel so much more accessible no matter how much experience you have coming in. I have learned so many different ways to use coding to make my work so much more efficient and comprehensive.”
“It is like drinking out of a firehouse. That’s just the way this sort of thing works. Keeping a good attitude and accepting that you will be challenged is extremely crucial to being successful.”
“I have learned so much and feel so much more capable in the work I do.”

Event Details:

Dates: June 8-12, 2026
Time: Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm
Location: UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, Los Angeles
Cost: $850 (includes training materials & refreshments)
Meals: Not included, but local dining options are available

The Instructor: Mellissa Chang

Mellissa Chang (she/hers) is freelance campaign researcher and data engineer. She conducts data-informed campaign research and builds data tools for labor unions and non-profits. Prior to this, she was a research coordinator at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, where she tracked and analyzed eviction data and acquisitions to support tenant organizing campaigns around the country. During the pandemic, she closely tracked covid relief spending, identifying parent recipients and matching recipients to a database of federal regulatory violations, earning her the DC Femme Tech Award in 2021. Before entering the non-profit sphere, she worked as an airports campaign researcher at 32BJ. Mellissa holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her spare time, she builds automated mass transit systems in Minecraft.

Application details
This application includes a short diagnostic test. The results of this test are only used to help design the course and are NOT factored into your application assessment.
This course is rigorous and fast-paced. By applying to this course, you pledge to remain focused and engaged, and to ask for help when needed.
Applications close on March 21, 2026. Accepted candidates will be notified shortly after this deadline. Space is limited.

Email srl@irle.ucla.edu for more information or if you have any questions.

About The UCLA Strategic Research Lab:
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab is a capacity-building training hub and network for researchers from labor and community-based organizations. As a research unit of a public university, the SRL seeks to train strategic researchers for the common good. Besides the Coding Camp for Union Research, the Strategic Research Lab also holds its annual Strategic Labor Research Conference, one of the largest annual convenings of labor and movement researchers in the nation.
Sign up for email updates for other Strategic Research Lab events and trainings here.
