Applied Research Symposium | Center for Healthcare Policy and Research | UC Davis Health

Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Kristen Harknett is a professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the Berkeley Population Center. Harknett co-directs The Shift Project, a large-scale survey and research study of low-wage workers in the service sector, which maps the connections between job quality and worker health and well-being. Her early research demonstrated the importance of labor market conditions and public policies in shaping childbearing decisions and relationship formation and stability. Her recent research includes examinations of routine work-schedule instability, access to paid sick leave, socioeconomic inequalities in working conditions, and automation and surveillance in workplaces. She has provided invited testimony to inform federal, state, and local policy-making around fair workweek regulations, including the Federal Schedules That Work Act, and legislation in California, Washington State, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other localities.