Please visit our FAQs to learn more about ERI and our recent name change.
The USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute (ERI) produces data-driven analysis and rigorous research, leads convenings, engages strategic collaborations, and models effective, sustainable, racially-just research center.
At ERI, we provide data and analysis to power social change. ERI believes that long-term change is made when historically marginalized communities are empowered, can put forth proposals, and hold decision-makers accountable. And, when communities come together across race, space, and place, movements for change build and have an impact on greater scales of governance. One of the many elements required to make this sort of change is research – the niche occupied by ERI. As a university-based research organization with reach to affected communities through community-based organizations, funders, business leaders, and others, ERI has contributed reliable data in the areas of environmental justice, immigrant integration, regional equity, and movement building that is academically rigorous as well as relevant to policy debates.
ERI is a research unit housed within the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. ERI is the entity resulting from the combination of two institutes: the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII), which were founded at USC in 2008.
Led by our Executive Director Professor Manuel Pastor, ERI currently has 20 full-time staff, graduate research assistants and undergraduate student workers, an advisory council of community partners, and a wide network of affiliated faculty members—both within USC and externally.
The USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute provides forward-looking, actionable research to support community-based organizations, funders, and other stakeholders.
ERI’s accurate, community-centered data and analysis are the basis of new narratives for equity. Our forward looking, actionable research supports the ecosystem of change by identifying new opportunities for investments, solidarity, and power building.
ERI’s key activities include:
We work with cross-sectoral partners from a range of nonprofits, community organizations, foundations, research centers, government agencies, the university community, and businesses who align with our mission, vision, and approach to data and analysis.
ERI will work with our partners to develop theory, frameworks, and data analysis; advance new narratives and; convene communities of learning and practice. Over the next several years, ERI will focus on the following three priority areas:
ERI is also committed to being a collaborative research center to increase our overall impact in our priority areas. Our aim is to achieve this by using centralized and collaborative practices, moving key stakeholders and audiences, and being a healthy, sustainable, and racially-just workplace.