Community

The Legal Studies Program is committed to community building through a series of events involving graduate students from across the university.   

In the Legal Politics Lab, students meet one to two times per quarter to check in and share their ideas and experiences. They regularly workshop papers or grant proposals in progress. As of Fall 2021, about 25% of Politics PhD students were regular participants in this lab. Some of the regular participants include Ellie Frazier, Ingy Higazy, Lucia Vitale, Mark Howard, Md Mizanur Rahman, Natali Levin Schwartz, Tomas Ocampo, and Shatakshi Singh. The Legal Studies Writing Group offers graduate students a space to co-work and develop research together. The quarterly Legal Studies Workshop (popularly known as Falafel Fridays) is organized for professors and graduate students for receiving feedback on their work in progress.

 Previously, the Legal Studies program arranged a Workshop dedicated to Graduate Students where professors and graduate students offered feedback on participants’ work-in-progress. It also hosted a year-long Graduate Fellows Program that supported UCSC graduate students working in the interdisciplinary field of Law and Society. The 2021-2022 fellows were PhD students drawn from five departments across the social sciences and humanities. The fellows received peer monitoring, support, professional development, and a research stipend. They also participated in workshops on the topics such as the nuts and bolts of publishing, grant proposal writing and interdisciplinary teaching pedagogy, the fellows met regularly for scholarly exchanges and professional development training from experts in the field. 

The Legal Studies Program also supports Teaching Assistants from Politics and other departments to assist in large lecture classes. Some of the most experienced TAs later work as graduate student instructors, including during summer sessions. Meet some of the TAs here.