Social Ecology Research Centers, Institutes and Initiatives

The School hosts 12 research centers or labs, one institute and one initiative. Collectively, they foster interdisciplinary research, training, and outreach addressing complex social, legal, political, and environmental problems that affect surrounding communities and society as a whole.

Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation

The Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation is part of a larger consortium of Blum Centers (beginning with the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley, established in 2006), across the University of California campuses. The Blum Centers operate on the idea that a world-class university must be a force for tackling the world’s most daunting challenge – poverty. The Center’s mission is to enable a new generation of students and researchers to ask and address critical questions about economic development that are key prerequisites to devising effective and innovative approaches to alleviating contemporary poverty both locally, in Orange County, and abroad. View Website

Center for Evidence-Based Corrections

The Center for Evidence-Based Corrections (CEBC) has administered millions of dollars in state-funded research on juvenile and adult correctional programs, including research on rehabilitation, parole and reentry programs, monitoring of sex offenders, and correctional options for female offenders. CEBC, which consists primarily of Criminology, Law & Society faculty, has become a nexus for policy-oriented research and graduate training. Given the importance of this topic for law and policy, we expect CEBC will also develop close ties with UCI’s new law school. View Website

Center in Law, Society and Culture

The Center in Law, Society and Culture (CLSC) brings together faculty in the Schools of Social Ecology (primarily CLS), Social Sciences and the Humanities who share an interest in the role of social, cultural and historical factors in the development of law and the importance of social and cultural assumptions in understanding and interpreting law. Seven CLS faculty members are affiliated with CLSC and CLS faculty members serve as both Director and Acting Director of CLSC. Law and culture has emerged as an exciting area of legal scholarship and UC Irvine already has significant strength in this area. View Website

Center for Psychology and Law

The Center for Psychology and Law (CPL) draws together faculty in Criminology, Law & Society and Psychology & Social Behavior. UC Irvine has emerged as one of the world’s leading centers for research in the field of psychology and law. View Website

Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research

The Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research is a shared resource that serves as a scientific hub where researchers with common interests can exchange ideas, develop collaborations among a domestic and international network of scientists, and is staffed by professional technical and administrative personnel with specialties in coordinating research, managing laboratory operations, conducting salivary assays, and administering budgets. The Institute’s laboratories and administrative infrastructure is located at UCI, but its affiliated scientists operate in a post-geographic network, wherever in the world they need to be to achieve their research objectives and hail from academic institutions around the world. View Website

Liveable Cities Lab

The UCI Livable Cities Lab has been created to leverage the academic expertise of UCI faculty and students in order to engage policy makers and stakeholders around three important issues: providing dignified housing for all, creating and maintaining safe communities; and promoting social enterprise as a way for faculty and students to have their research and ideas contribute to the greater good. View Website

Metropolitan Futures Initiative

The Metropolitan Futures Initiative aims to develop an improved understanding of communities and their potential for integrative and collaborative planning and action to ensure a bright future for the region. It approaches these goals by bringing together an interdisciplinary research team along with the insights and techniques of “big data” research. By combining various large longitudinal and spatial data sources, and then employing cutting edge statistical analyses, the goal is to come to a better understanding of how the various dimensions of the social ecology of a region move together to produce the outcomes observed within our neighborhoods. View Website

Newkirk Center for Science and Society

The Newkirk Center for Science and Society finds ways to develop and share research knowledge with the public and policymakers so they can make informed decisions on vital policy issues of law, education, environment, health care, crime, and public infrastructure. The Center carries out its mission in several ways: through workshops, colloquia, town hall meetings, distinguished visitors, and communication programs. One area in which the interests of several CLS faculty members overlap with the focus of the Newkirk Center relates to expert testimony and, more broadly, the use (and misuse) of science in legal proceedings. View Website

UCI Law and Ethnography Lab

The UCI Law and Ethnography Lab is an interdisciplinary collaborative working group of scholars engaged in research, including  law and policy, incarceration, institutions, and immigration. View Website

UCI Labor Center

The UCI Labor Center builds the power of working people in Orange County and beyond by promoting, defending, and expanding workers’ rights. Through research, advocacy, policy innovation, education, and outreach, the center supports unions and worker organizations in their efforts to build a fair and racially just worker-centered economy. View Website

Water UCI

Water UCI serves as a coordinating vehicle to facilitate seamless collaboration across schools, departments, and existing research centers around questions of fundamental and applied water science, technology, management, and policy. Water UCI builds on existing campus-wide strengths by affording a plan for responding to the many “grand challenges” facing water resources, and for which UCI is well-equipped. View Website