Research Director

Job Description

The mission of the Initiative on Land, Housing & Property Rights (the Initiative) is to address real property issues that impact poor and disadvantaged communities. Many of the activities the Initiative undertakes assist disadvantaged communities that have been harmed as a result of lacking adequate land, housing, and other property rights. The Initiative’s core activities include training law students and other students to develop legal and other technical expertise that can be used by these students when they are in school and after they graduate to help disadvantaged people and communities address their land and housing issues; catalyzing both theoretical and applied, policy-relevant research on various land and housing issues that have been understudied and undertheorized; proactively working to develop impactful legal reform and policy solutions to address property problems disadvantaged communities experience; and sponsoring both continuing legal education programs for lawyers and community legal education and other outreach programs for disadvantaged communities. The Initiative hopes to collaborate with other stakeholders in a true spirit of partnership to more effectively address land and housing issues that disadvantaged communities experience, specifically communities that are disproportionately though not exclusively communities of color.

Position Summary

The ILHPR seeks an ambitious, entrepreneurial, and thoughtful Research Director to help build up the Initiative’s research program so that it can produce timely, high quality, and policy-relevant research, which will inform a variety of stakeholders, including academics, other researchers, and policymakers. The research will be generated using a variety of methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and doctrinal, a research method many legal academic researchers use. The Research Director will manage and support members of the research team, including the Post-Graduate Research Fellow and the Ph.D. Fellow for Research and will work with members of the research team to ensure the quality of research projects at each stage of every research project. 

The Research Director will serve as a member of the ILHPR’s leadership team, which includes the Initiative’s Director, the Faculty Director of Housing and Property Rights Programs, the Senior Associate Director of Operations, the Policy Director, and the Assistant Director of Special Projects. The Research Director will consult with other members of the leadership team, the Post-Graduate Research Fellow, and certain external stakeholders to develop the Initiative’s research agenda, including the following: identifying new research opportunities; developing robust research designs that in the aggregate employ of variety of methodologies; ensuring there is a robust set of annual convenings, including an annual national conference, seminars, workshops, and panel discussions; and overseeing the publication and dissemination of research reports. To make the research work sustainable, the Research Director will help identify funding opportunities for research projects, sometimes working individually and sometimes in collaboration with other Initiative staff members, and will then assist in developing funding proposals and in other development efforts. The Research Director also will work with the leadership team and the Post-Graduate Research Fellow in an effort to establish new research collaborations and will serve as the Initiative’s point person in leading and managing any external research partnerships that are established.

The Research Director also will serve as the Initiative’s representative for research-related media relations and for other stakeholders interested in various aspects of the Initiative’s research program. The Initiative seeks candidates whose experience has prepared them to contribute to our commitment to diversity and inclusion, both in our internal management practices as well as in shaping our Initiative’s research agenda.

This is a hybrid position. There will be some travel, primarily in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region, though there also will be some travel required to other parts of the United States.

Duties Include:

Strategy & Planning (30%)

• Collaborate with the leadership team and internal and external researchers on developing a comprehensive 3-year strategic plan for research programs and agendas.
• Monitor strategic direction of program to ensure that the Initiative’s research program fulfills its mission of producing high quality research that contributes to advancing knowledge about various land and housing issues disadvantaged communities face.
• Ensure that research informs both academic researchers, nonprofit and for profit land and housing organizations, and policymakers, among other stakeholders, and that it has appropriate scope and complexity for the Initiative’s particular stage of development.
• Ensure that the Initiative sponsors a robust set of research-related convenings on an annual basis, including but not limited to its signature annual national conference (planned collectively by all of the members of the leadership team).
• Identify and cultivates prospective new research partnerships and funding sources.
• Identify possible people with relevant, outstanding research backgrounds who would be excellent candidates to serve on a possible Initiative advisory board and as fellows and affiliates of the Initiative.

Administrative Responsibilities (50%)

• Play a leading role in hiring the other members of the research team. Once hired, the Research Director will have primary responsibility for managing these staff members.
• Develop policies and procedures to ensure that established timelines and milestones are met and that the research team produces high quality research in a timely way.
• Make recommendations and implements decisions on issues (operational, budget processes, and human resources, for example) that have program-wide impact.
• Oversee any ongoing collaborations between internal and external organizations, strategically drawing upon resources of both, to deliver specific research outcomes.
• With the participation at times of some other members of the leadership team, represents the organization in working with funding agencies and in developing financial resources to support the research programs.
• Serve as the Initiative’s research representative for various external stakeholders that work on land and housing matters in both the nonprofit and for profit sectors.
• Interface with the media in strategic ways to promote the research program.

Research Responsibilities (20%):

• Serve as an active researcher in developing at least one significant publication per year, whether individually or in collaboration with other members of the research team.
• In partnership with other members of the research team and, at times, certain members of the leadership team, presents research at conferences, seminars, workshops, panels, and other public-facing venues.

Full-Time Equivalent Hiring Range: $92,300 to $115,400; salary commensurate with relevant experience.

Requirements

Education

• Bachelor's degree in related area and/or equivalent experience/training. [Required]
• Advanced degree in a related field (e.g., Planning, Urban Economics, Sociology, Agricultural Economics, Public Policy/Administration, Law). [Required]

Basic qualifications (at the time of application): 

• Minimum of five years of relevant research experience working in the areas of rural or urban policy, affordable housing, community development, land use, real estate, or another related area. Such relevant experience may include research experience in academia, government, or another type of organization that has a substantial research or public policy program. 
• Significant supervisory experience.

Preferred qualifications: 

• Research publications that draw upon both quantitative and qualitative methods and co-authorship with other members of an interdisciplinary team.
• Technical skills in conducting quantitative data analysis with national data sets such as the U.S. Census, ACS PUMS data, HMDA data, and HUD Datasets.
• Experience strategically analyzing data with statistical software such as SAS, STATA, R, or Python.
• Knowledge and experience with ArcGIS. 
• Experience with information dissemination, including written and oral presentations of complex research to diverse audiences and with traditional and social media platforms.
• In depth knowledge of a wide range of heirs’ property and other fractionated property ownership issues.
• Significant knowledge of both rural and urban land and housing issues.
• Working knowledge of federal, state, and municipal rural and urban housing programs or land use regulations is strongly preferred.
• Strong organizational, analytical, and project management abilities.
• Experience in a start-up environment managing junior staff and working as part of a fast-paced, dynamic team.

Skills

• Substantial research background addressing real property, housing, and/or land use matters that impact disadvantaged communities and people.
• Demonstrated innovative or cutting-edge research capabilities.
• Expert communication and interpersonal skills with respect to various types of oral and written communication and in interacting with a diverse group of people with different lived experiences, cultures, and identities.
• Significant management experience in academic, nonprofit, governmental, or government sponsored organizations or entities.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and implement innovative programs or research agenda.
• Ability to manage collaborations between academic, nonprofit, governmental, and/or government sponsored entities.  
• Demonstrated expertise in program building within a leading academic, nonprofit, or governmental organization or entity.
• Excellent administrative, budgetary, human resources, and financial skills and practices.  
• Expert ability to work with a dynamic and diverse group of people with different levels of responsibility and experience.
• Significant, successful fundraising experience, including but not limited to the ability to cultivate new donors, the ability to draft excellent funding proposals, and the ability to manage post-award reporting and other requirements of funders.
• Ability to work collaboratively and communicate effectively with an interdisciplinary team.
• Ability to manage multiple simultaneous projects and deadlines.

Boston College offers a broad and competitive range of benefits depending on your job classification eligibility:

• Tuition remission for Employees
• Tuition remission for Spouses and Children who meet eligibility requirements
• Generous Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Low-Cost Life Insurance
• Eligibility for both University-Funded 401k and Employer-Sponsored 403b Retirement Plans
• Paid Holidays Annually
• Generous Sick and Vacation Pay
• Additional benefits can be found on https://www.bc.edu/employeehandbook

Boston College conducts pre-employment background checks as part of the hiring process.

Boston College is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. In concert with our Jesuit, Catholic mission, Boston College is dedicated to the goal of building a culturally diverse and pluralistic faculty and staff committed to teaching and working in a multicultural environment and strongly encourages applications for women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans. To learn more about how BC supports diversity and inclusion throughout the university please visit the Office for Institutional Diversity at https://www.bc.edu/diversity.

Boston College's Notice of Nondiscrimination can be viewed at https://www.bc.edu/nondiscrimination.