Post-Doctoral Fellow

About the Position

Professors Daniel Schneider (Harvard Kennedy School) and David Weil (Brandeis University / Harvard Kennedy School) are recruiting one full-time postdoctoral research fellow with a PhD in sociology, economics, public policy, industrial relations, or a related field for the  Academic Year. The post-doctoral fellow will contribute to a research project focused on strategic enforcement of labor standards in the United States.

This position is based at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA. The appointment term is for one year with the potential for a second-year renewal contingent on performance and funding.

This is a hybrid position based on our campus in Cambridge, MA. As a campus-based institution, we place a high value on the in‑person experience, cross‑team collaboration, and strong community building in order to create a vibrant campus for our students, faculty, staff, and research fellows. The fellow will be required to work in‑person on campus a minimum of three days per week during the academic year.

The Strategic Enforcement Lab, originated in 2026 with funding from the Harvard Impact Labs, aims to use novel sources of data and methods to advance scientific knowledge by helping state and local labor agencies solve applied problems with the goal of improving labor standards compliance, enforcement, and ultimately worker wellbeing.

It is an initiative at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. The MWC is a vibrant intellectual community of faculty, Master’s and PhD students, researchers, fellows, and administrative staff whose mission is to address pressing public policy questions through academic research, teaching and policy outreach. The work of the Center covers the domains of health care, human services, criminal justice, labor markets, education and political and economic inequality.

The Wiener Center addresses pressing questions in these areas by carrying out research on important public policy issues, educating the next generation of academics and policy scholars, and ensuring that research and education are closely tied to and draw from policy and practice.

The post-doctoral fellow will work closely with Professors Schneider and Weil on a project to develop new tools for state labor enforcement agencies to use to more strategically deploy limited investigative and compliance resources. The fellow will lead the integration and construction of multiple data sources, including survey data, agency administrative data, and other establishment, firm, and area-level datasets. They will also contribute to data analysis and the development of predictive models for state labor enforcement agencies to use to: (1) identify firms at high risk of violations and model patterns of non-compliance to inform strategic enforcement;

and (2) identify investigations that generate deterrence effects and enforcement spillovers.

The post-doctoral fellow will oversee the day-to-day implementation of a field experiment working with state agency collaborators, supported by the Project Manager and in close collaboration with the PIs. Overall, the position will involve significant data construction, computational analysis, management of relationships with non-academic collaborators, and contributions to co-authored presentations and publications.

The post-doctoral fellow would work closely with the PIs as well as with other team members including graduate and undergraduate students, pre-doctoral fellows, and research staff, and state and local agency partners and participate in regular team convenings and frequent meetings. The post-doctoral fellow would receive both hands‑on training through the planned research work and also additional professional and research mentorship from Professors Schneider and Weil.

The post-doctoral fellow would be encouraged to co-author with Schneider and Weil as well as maintain an ongoing portfolio of independent research.

Wiener Center Fellows receive a competitive salary and are eligible for Harvard University’s partially subsidized…