Jules Rochielle SievertResearch programs and labs
I develop interdisciplinary initiatives that connect rigorous research with the knowledge, priorities, and participation of affected communities.
Providence, Rhode Island · Working internationally
Designing systems-level change through participatory research.
I build research programs, partnerships, and civic infrastructures that help communities and institutions act on complex justice problems.
Available for research leadership, faculty appointments, program leadership, lab building, and selected consulting engagements
Over the span of my career, I have developed a systems practice connecting community knowledge, institutional resources, participatory research, and sustained partnership. Beginning September 1, 2026, I will bring that experience to research leadership, program development, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
13Years of NuLawLab leadership
≈$1.4MSecured for research, programs, and commissions · View record →
12Years teaching law students
25+Years of community-based practice
Capabilities
What I build
Community–institution partnerships
I create structures through which universities, public agencies, nonprofits, cultural organizations, and communities can work across different forms of knowledge and power.
Civic infrastructures
I build the programs, platforms, relationships, and learning environments that allow knowledge to circulate and collective action to continue beyond a single project.
Evaluation and learning systems
I design research and evaluation frameworks that examine what lasts: how knowledge travels, capacity develops, practices change, and work becomes embedded within organizations and communities.
Selected work
Programs, platforms, and civic infrastructure
East Boston Spatial Justice Lab
A community-engaged research lab connecting housing instability, cultural organizing, legal empowerment, and collective capacity.
Explore the project →Stable Ground
An artist-residency model embedded within Boston’s housing-stability system, supported through two rounds of Kresge Foundation funding.
Explore the project →NuLawMaps
A GIS platform connecting spatial evidence, qualitative accounts, and human stories across housing and workplace-justice initiatives.
Explore the project →Approach
Systems change and collective legal capacity
Justice problems do not emerge from a single institution, policy, service, or individual behavior. They are produced through interactions among organizations, technologies, relationships, cultural narratives, legal structures, and places.
My practice examines how these elements reinforce one another, where power is concentrated, and what conditions allow communities to act. Participation is not simply a research technique within this approach. It redistributes authorship, changes relationships to knowledge, and creates the conditions through which people can interpret their circumstances and act together.
Collective legal capacity
The durable and distributed ability of people, relationships, organizations, and civic infrastructures to understand how law operates, circulate knowledge, recognize injustice, coordinate action, make collective claims, and change the systems affecting their lives.
Read about my approach →NextHow I work →