UCLA’s Strategic Research Lab (SRL)
Knowledge is only power when used strategically. From the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Research Department’s power structure manuals of the 1960s, to the contemporary Labor Movement’s comprehensive campaigns, social movements have always been more effective when they use strategic research to inform their organizing.
Through workshops, conferences, research, data analytics training camps, and social events, the UCLA Strategic Research Lab (SRL) 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.
The UCLA Strategic Labor Research Conference is an annual event that includes workshops on applied skills and discussions about strategic campaigns designed for new and experienced union and other social and economic movement researchers. Dynamic keynote speakers and a variety of exciting training sessions will help sharpen movement researchers’ skill sets.
The next conference will be held in summer 2025. Visit the conference webpage, here.
The SRL holds workshops and one-on-one training consultations to teach researchers from labor, tenant rights, environmental justice, immigrant rights and community-based organizations key skills to support their organizing efforts. Our team understands that the construction of knowledge relies heavily on access to information, and wants to ensure that movement researchers know the best ways to collect and analyze data in their pursuit of social and economic change.
The SRL also hosts a series of in-depth data analytics training camps providing movement researchers the opportunity to step away from their day-to-day work to enhance their expertise and research capabilities. Camp attendees will leave our sessions equipped with key technical skills and strategic concepts to inform their strategies, and with the ability to understand the complex and rapidly-evolving social movements landscape. Our upcoming training sessions are “Coding Camp for Movement Researchers” (Spring 2025) and “Sectoral Analysis Camp” (Winter 2026).
The SRL engages in quantitative and qualitative, contemporary and historical research projects on worker and community activism, including histories of organizing campaigns, analysis of current unionization trends, and surveys to assess public opinion on organized labor, politics, and public policies. Informed by the past and present, our research projects aim to educate and bolster organizing strategies to support labor and other social movements throughout the state of California and beyond.
Current projects include a report on the “State of California Unions”, a history of early researchers of the AFL-CIO’s Food and Allied Service Trades (FAST) Department, survey on public attitudes about labor unions and labor policies, and research on non-profit organizing.
