Job Description

The American Bar Foundation (ABF) invites applications to join its residential faculty as a Research Professor beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year. We seek one or more early to mid-career scholar(s) with a PhD and/or JD and a demonstrated capacity for innovative research on socio-legal issues. We welcome applicants from all research domains, all social science disciplines, and all methodological and theoretical approaches. We are deeply committed to fostering a diverse scholarly community, and we strongly encourage applicants from historically under-represented groups.

The successful candidate(s) will join a vibrant interdisciplinary community of scholars, contributing to expanding knowledge and advancing justice through rigorous, theoretically grounded empirical research. ABF Research Professors hold a mix of full-time appointments at the ABF and joint appointments with nearby universities. These appointments are ongoing, subject to periodic performance reviews. All ABF Research Professors receive competitive salary and benefits and generous internal research funding, along with office space, computing support, and library access at the ABF's downtown Chicago headquarters, adjacent to the Northwestern University Law School. They enjoy intellectual autonomy and are responsible for setting their own research agendas and designing and conducting their own empirical investigations, and they are expected to pursue external funding and publication opportunities whenever feasible and appropriate.

For the current hiring cycle, among other things, we especially encourage applicants with backgrounds in anthropology, or with research agendas addressing migration and citizenship, whether in the US or globally. We also particularly welcome applicants, regardless of discipline or research domain, who seek a full-time (non-joint) ABF appointment, although joint appointments with Chicago-area universities are also possible.

How To Apply

Interested candidates should submit:

• A cover letter of no more than three pages, which should include a brief statement about the applicant's commitment to diversity and inclusion in their scholarship and professional life; 
• A curriculum vitae; 
• A writing sample; 
• A research statement of no more than two pages, describing current and future research plans; and 
• Three academic letters of reference, submitted directly to careers(at)abfn.org.

To ensure full consideration, all materials should be submitted no later than September 15, 2024 . Materials should be uploaded electronically, through the Breezy portal, except for the letters of reference. Letters and inquiries should be directed to careers(at)abfn.org.

About The ABF

The ABF is a world-renowned interdisciplinary research institute committed to the empirical social scientific study of law, legal institutions, and legal processes. Founded in 1952 by the American Bar Association (ABA) and supported in part by the American Bar Endowment (ABE), the ABF operates as a fully independent organization – autonomous, nonpartisan, and firmly committed to academic freedom and open inquiry. Its Chicago-based but globally engaged faculty-in-residence includes leading scholars in anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and law. The vibrant and diverse ABF community also features a wide array of weekly speakers, visiting scholars, and post-doctoral, doctoral, and undergraduate research fellows. (For more about the ABF, see: ( and (

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The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is firmly committed to providing equal employment opportunities and reasonable accommodations to all qualified applicants. The ABF evaluates qualified applicants without regard to race, religion; gender; gender identity; sexual orientation; age; citizenship or national origin; pregnancy; disability; military status; status as a victim of violence; and all other protected classes under the law. Please note that a pre-employment background check is required for final candidates; however, past convictions do not necessarily disqualify a candidate from employment. For more on the ABF's commitment to maintaining a diverse, fair, inclusive, and supportive workplace, visit ( .

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