Education: Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley, 2009; M.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1999; M.A., Stanford University, 1998; B.A., University of California-Santa Cruz, 1992.
Naomi Levy’s research centers on the relationships between ordinary citizens and the state. She has over two decades of experience conducting community-based research in conflict-affected settings around the world. Her research has taken her from the former Yugoslavia to Colombia to her own backyard in Oakland, CA. In all of her work, she strives to understand 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.
She is a faculty affiliate at the Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley, a research coordinator with the Everyday Peace Indicators NGO, a certified workshop facilitator with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and is the Director of SCU’s Office of Student Fellowships.
Levy 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 California Community Foundation / California 100 Initiative, and Tipping Point.
- Political Science Research
- Applied Quantitative Methods
- Identity Politics in Comparative Perspective
- Political Psychology
- Jacobs, E., Levy, N., Reid, C., & Lerman, A.E. (2025). Developing Firsthand Indicators of Wellbeing in Permanent Supportive Housing Resident Communities. Possibility Lab Report.
- Vera-Adrianzén, F., Cifuentes, R.G., Levy, N., & Lerman, A.E., (2024). Health & Harvest: Developing Health Indicators with Inland Empire & Coachella Valley Farm, Warehouse, and Service Workers. Possibility Lab Report
- Levy, N., Lerman, A.E., Dixon, P., & Vera-Adrianzén, F. (2024). Firsthand Framework for Policy Innovation: Exploring New Community-Engaged Models for Public Safety Reform. Possibility Lab Report.
- Levy, N., Lerman, A.E., & Dixon, P. (2023). Reimagining Public Safety: Defining “Community” in Participatory Research. Law and Social Inquiry, 1-22.
- Levy, N., Lerman, A.E., & Skeem, J. (2023). Participatory Methods for Evaluating New Approaches to Mental Health Crisis Response. Report to Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, May 19, 2023.
- Levy, N., & Firchow, P. (2021). Measuring Peace from the Bottom Up with the Pasto Indigenous Group in Nariño, Colombia. PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 558-564.
- Berg, L. A., & Levy, N. (2020). When aid builds states: party dominance and the effects of foreign aid on tax collection after civil war. International Interactions, 46(3), 454-480.
- Barma, N. H., Levy, N., & Piombo, J. (2020). The impact of aid dynamics on state effectiveness and legitimacy. Studies in Comparative International Development, 55, 184-203.
- Barma, N. H., Levy, N., & Piombo, J. (2017). Disentangling aid dynamics in statebuilding and peacebuilding: a causal framework. International Peacekeeping, 24(2), 187-211.