Workshop on Guaranteed Income Experiments. The moral, ecological, and economic value of a basic income.

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Keynote Speaker

Dr. Amy Castro

Amy Castro, PhD, MSW is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the School of Social Policy & Practice and is the Co-Founder and faculty director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research. Her work explores economic mobility, guaranteed income, innovation, and disparities in housing and lending. She served as the Co-PI of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration under former Mayor Michael Tubbs which, lead to a proliferation of experimentation with unconditional cash across the U.S. Dr. Castro is the Co-PI of 30 applied cash-transfer studies housed at CGIR where she currently advises more than 20 Mayoral teams, state, and county legislators on unconditional cash research. Her work on guaranteed income has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, the Monarch Foundation, the City of Los Angeles, LA County, the City of Newark, the Yellow Chair Foundation, the City of Oakland, the Social Impact Fund, and the Economic Security Project. Dr. Castro’s research is featured often in the popular press including the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, the Economist, the LA Times, CNN, NBC, PBS, and National Public Radio.

Dr. Castro is also known for her work on women and risky lending during the foreclosure crisis. She was awarded the GADE research award, the Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Dissertation Award, and the Nina Fortin Award for her work on the gender and racial contours of predatory lending. She was the 2017 recipient of the SP2 teaching award, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Penn’s School of Nursing (AY 19/20), is an affiliated faculty member of the Alice Paul Center and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and is a member of the LGBTQ faculty working group. Prior to her time at Penn, she spent more than a decade working with non-profits and community-based agencies in Philadelphia and New York City. Her research has been published by Social Service Review, The Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, Social Work, The American Journal of Public Health and JPAM. She earned a PhD in Social Welfare and a Master of Philosophy from the City University of New York, a Master of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Social Work from Cairn University.

Speakers

These are the confirmed speakers for the 2024 Workshop on Guaranteed Income Experiments at the University of New Orleans, on February 22 & 23, 2024.

More speakers will be added as they are confirmed.

Soomi Lee

Soomi Lee is a Professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of La Verne. She teaches research design and quantitative methods, public economics, public policy analysis, and urban studies. Her research interests include state and local public finance, fiscal institutions, tax policy, redistributive policies, and urban economic resilience. Her work appeared in Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, Regional Studies, Journal of Socioeconomics, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Public Finance Review, Basic Income Studies, and other outlets. She is a recipient of several grants and best paper awards. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics and Political Science from the Claremont Graduate University in 2011.

Roberto Merrill

Roberto Merrill is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Minho, where he coordinates the MA in Political Philosophy.

He is also a researcher at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society (CEPS), where he co-coordinates (with Stuart White, Oxford University) the UBIEXP project on UBI experiments and the PREDPOD project (with Alan Thomas, University of York) on pre-distribution and property-owning democracy. He is an Associate Researcher at CEVIPOF (Sciences Po-Paris) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Research Committee on Political Philosophy of the International Political Science Association. In 2019 he published a book co-authored by Sara Bizarro on Rendimento básico incondicional (Prize by the Portuguese Society of Philosophy for best essay in philosophy for 2018-2019) and in 2022 a book on UBI experiments: Basic Income Experiments: A Critical Examination of their Goals, Contexts, and Methods.

Sara Bizarro

Sara Bizarro has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and teaches at the University of New Orleans. She is an Associate Researcher at Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society (CEPS), and is a team member of the UBIEXP project on UBI experiments. In 2019 she published a book co-authored by Roberto Merrill on Rendimento básico incondicional (Prize by the Portuguese Society of Philosophy for best essay in philosophy for 2018-2019). She is a member of USBIG (US Basic Income Guaranteed Network) and BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network). She co-organized the 17th Bien Congress in Lisbon, Portugal in 2017 and co-founded the RBIP - Associação pelo Rendimento Básico Incondicional Portugal to promote Basic Income in Portugal. She also wrote for BIEN News and presented in many Basic Income related conferences.

Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar, is a researcher, writer, and advocate for Universal Basic Income. He is the cofounder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, cofounder the academic journal Basic Income Studies, and former co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network. He has published ten books, not including his forthcoming book Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge (MIT Press). He has appeared in many media outlets including the New York Times, the Guardian, and The Atlantic Monthly, which called him “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement.”

Anamaria Villamarin-Lupin

Anamaria Villamarin-Lupin, LCSW-BACS is the Deputy Director of Programs for the Office of Youth and Families. Prior to joining the City of New Orleans, Anamaria worked for 10 years at the Broadmoor Improvement Association as the Wellness Director and Clinical Supervisor. In that role, Anamaria developed and supervised the mental health internship program, wellness services, a food pantry and professional development workshops. Anamaria has called New Orleans home for 24 years, she is the mother of two teenage boys and is happily married to a son of New Orleans since 1998. Additionally, she is a trained translator and interpreter for Spanish speaking families. She looks forward to using her skills to enrich the lives of all youth and families across the city.

Talia Livneh

Talia Livneh is the Director of Programs at Rooted School Foundation, an education non-profit organization that oversees a portfolio of high schools and pioneering innovative economic-mobility interventions. Talia spearheads groundbreaking projects such as the "Green Balloon Fellowship," and "The $50 Study," a first-of-its-kind guaranteed income program for high school students. As the project manager for "The $50 Study", Talia has become a leader in developing the programmatic systems and structures for implementing guaranteed income within schools. She has a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering, an additional degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University; and a Masters of Arts in School Organization and Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Jennifer Ramo

Jennifer Ramo is the founder and Executive Director of New Mexico Appleseed. An experienced attorney, she designed New Mexico Appleseed’s effective system of change and created Appleseed’s first-in-the-nation programs such as the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights (prohibited lunch shaming children whose parents owe school meal debt), the Breakfast After the Bell law (requires all high poverty elementary schools to serve breakfast during the school day that has been replicated by over a dozen states and districts) and the Food Access Navigator project on the Navajo Nation (awarded a USDA innovation demonstration grant).

Michael Howard

Michael Howard is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine (USA). He is the author of Self-management and the Crisis of Socialism (2000), and the editor of Socialism (2001). He is the co-editor (with Karl Widerquist) of Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (2012) and Exporting the Alaska Model (2012). He has been the president of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network (2008-2022), and co-editor of Basic Income Studies (2014-2022). He is the author of over 60 articles and book chapters in social and political philosophy, on such topics as socialism, workplace democracy, climate justice, and basic income.

Jim Mulvale

Jim Mulvale is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Manitoba (Canada) located on Treaty One territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis Nation. He teaches social welfare policy and has written extensively on basic income in the Canadian political context and on the ecological case for a universal and unconditional guarantee of economic security for all. He was a founding member of the Basic Income Canada Network in 2008 and remains active in the basic income movement.

Andrés Acuña

Andrés Acuña was born in El Paso, Texas, and has lived in a few different places around the country. He wants everyone to know that he began and completed high school in New Orleans, attending Holy Cross School in Gentilly. Upon graduating Holy Cross in 2017, Andrés attended Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Although he grew up in a family that featured both parents working in government, Andrés never imagined himself following in their footsteps so quickly after school. Andrés began his government-centered career as a Communications & Public Relations Intern at a small communications firm in Alexandria, VA, and then moved back to New Orleans to work as an Americorps VISTA in the Mayor's Office of Cultural Economy. While working at OCE, Andrés was in charge of Policy-related work that effected the cultural aspects of the city, as well as performing communications-oriented tasks. Andrés wants to break ground at OYF, and is extremely excited to get going! For any policy-related suggestions that relate to Youth & Families in New Orleans.

Sid Frankel

Sid Frankel, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, and teaches courses on critical theory and social work, program evaluation, and theory and research related to social work practice. His research interests include poverty reduction policy and non-profit sector- state relations. Recent publications include Frankel, S. (2022). Poverty as a human rights violation. In John Packer and Alex Neve (Eds.) 2019-2021 Canadian Yearbook of Human Rights. (Volume III) (pp. 118 -126. Ottawa, On: Human Rights Research and Education Centre, University of Ottawa, Human Rights Research and Education Centre and Forget, E. and Frankel, S. (forthcoming) Flirting with a basic income in Canada, International Social Security Review. Dr. Frankel is an executive board member of the Basic Income Canada Network, the chairperson of the Basic Income Manitoba board of directors and a member of the national steering committee of Campaign 2000 to End Child Poverty.

Megan Lundstrom

With a background in survivor-led, evidence-based program development and a commitment to advocating for the economic empowerment of survivors of human trafficking, Megan Lundstrom is the inaugural Director of the Resilience Fund at Polaris, a leading organization in domestic anti-trafficking work. Megan’s unique combination of lived experience, direct service provision, survivor-led research initiatives, and non-profit management over the past 15 years provides an opportunity for trust-building within the survivor community for this new initiative at Polaris. Megan holds a BS in Finance and an MA in Applied Sociology from the University of Northern Colorado. (more about Polaris: https://polarisproject.org/about-us/)

Registration

This workshop is free, but registration is required.

Please RSVP here.

Workshop on Guaranteed Income Experiments

The moral, ecological, and economic value of a basic income.

The University of New Orleans

Free Registration. Just scroll down and RSVP to attend.
You can access the schedule here, and the full program here.

Keynote Speaker

Speakers

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