Labor Studies

The Department of Labor Studies offers degree and certificate programs that examine the opportunities and challenges facing workers and their organizations.

The program builds critical thinking, analytical, and leadership skills so that students become more effective advocates for workers’ rights and social justice.

Our faculty, drawn from a wide variety of academic fields and areas of expertise, bring real world experience to their teaching and to their scholarship. As researchers, practitioners, or both, Labor Studies faculty engage issues of immediate relevance to labor and community-based movements, public policy and the wider public. The faculty’s commitment to grounded scholarship is mirrored in the School’s approach to teaching. Students are recruited from both traditional and nontraditional backgrounds and receive rigorous training in labor studies, preparing them for careers as practitioners and/or researchers.

The School’s public service efforts include conferences and forums on topics of interest to the labor and social justice movements and the public policy community, as well as policy research publications aimed at the wider public and a journal.