Director of the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality and Democracy
: Job Details :

The University of California, Santa Barbara seeks to hire an internationally recognized scholar as Director of The Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality and Democracy. The successful candidate may specialize in any area of the social sciences, broadly defined including history, and will have a tenured faculty appointment in the appropriate department in the division of social sciences. The initial appointment as Blum Center Director will be for a 5-year period, and is renewable. The ideal candidate will have a strong record of success in innovating and applying public-facing or community-centered scholarly research in critical political economy (or related fields) to address social issues across geographic and social scales.

Job duties include:

Founded in 2018, the UCSB Blum Center fosters interdisciplinary, socially engaged research and learning about the inequities that shape contemporary social and economic life and obstruct the aspirations of democratic societies. The Center's work is intended to contribute to collective action that advances intersectional economic and social justice in the South-Central Coast region of California (where UCSB is located), the United States, and globally. The next director of the Blum Center will have the academic expertise to address this critical political-economic nexus, be committed to public-facing and/or community-centered scholarship and impact, and have a passion to generate and nurture collaborative projects with community organizations.

The Blum Center generates and supports a variety of public-facing research projects, as well as an undergraduate Minor degree. The director will assume responsibility for an administrative portfolio that includes co-leading established programs focused on cooperative economics and on promoting regional equity within and across California's Central Coast communities, as well as collaborating with faculty and community leaders to foster the development of emerging initiatives, including: the Central Coast Community Labor Project; Organizing Knowledges; the Marxist Institute for Research; and the Amazon Corporation and Economic Justice Project. With assistance from professional and paid student staff, the director will also assume responsibility for: annual budget planning and administration; grants administration; fundraising; communications and public outreach; public programming; and staff oversight and development. In addition, the director will provide leadership for a vibrant interdisciplinary Minor in Poverty, Inequality and Social Justice.

The Director will be hired as a tenured professor. The ideal candidate for this position will have a strong record of impactful scholarship deploying applied or community-centered approaches, institution building and organizing experience at the local, regional or community level. While a candidate's research may be committed to a local scale, the implications of this research should simultaneously respond to broader theoretical questions and social phenomena across geographical scales. The focus of this research should be in the area of poverty, inequality, justice and democracy. Expertise is welcome in intersectional approaches to questions of, for example: land, labor, social reproduction, structural violence, and redistribution. Empirical research areas might include: housing; climate change; the social/structural determinants of health; transportation; migration; agriculture; urban-rural geographies; finance; policy and governance.

Candidates with all forms of social sciences disciplinary training and expertise—broadly defined—will be considered. We hope to attract candidates whose research is committed to understanding global, transregional, and/or national patterns of socio-economic inequality, a commitment to the Blum Center's portfolio and mission of research; an interest and willingness to facilitate deep collaborative relationships with community organizations in the Central Coast region of California is required. The appointment will be at the rank of tenured associate or full professor within a department in the division of Social Sciences.

The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching, and service as appropriate to the position.