Naomi Levy is Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University and the Director of Community Engaged Research at the Possibility Lab. Naomi’s research focuses on understanding the forces that shape the relationship between ordinary citizens and the state and seeks to facilitate government responsiveness to community needs by amplifying the voices that are best placed to guide public servants.

Naomi has over two decades of experience conducting community-based research in conflict-affected settings around the world. In the former Yugoslavia, she trained a team of university students to conduct interviews and focus groups with parents, teachers, and students in divided schools. In Colombia, she guided a research team in collaboration with an indigenous women’s activist group to build a bottom-up peace barometer for the Pastos indigenous peoples using everyday peace indicators. In her own backyard in Oakland, California, she worked with six community based organizations to co-create indicators of public safety. From that work, she built the lab’s Firsthand Framework for Policy Innovation research initiative.

Naomi received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and also holds an MA in Social Sciences of Education from Stanford University School of Education. Her scholarship has been published in a broad range of academic journals, and she has received funding for her work from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Minerva Initiative, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the CA 100 initiative, and Tipping Point.

Because she doesn’t have enough to do, Naomi also serves as Director of the Office of Student Fellowships at Santa Clara University, where she gets to witness and nurture the incredible growth of ambitious undergraduate students from all disciplines as they apply for competitive opportunities like Rhodes, Truman and Fulbright. And she is also a certified workshop facilitator with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which means she occasionally visits university campuses across the country to drop nuggets of wisdom that can help faculty thrive in the academy. In her admittedly limited free time, Naomi most loves soaking up nature’s beauty, taking in live music, and dispensing unsolicited advice.