Dr. Pamela Izvănariu joined the faculty at McGeorge School of Law in 2024. As a legal and sociological scholar, Professor Izvănariu uses historical, legal, and empirical methodologies to investigate both historical and contemporary questions on law, labor, inequality, and social movements. At one end, her research examines the unrecognized movement lawyering, mobilization, and empirical methods of John P. Davis as he exposed and challenged discriminatory labor and employment law in the early New Deal. At the other, it explores the impact of platform-based companies and emerging platform-based worker law, and automated decision systems and artificial intelligence, on the lives of workers in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe.
Professor Izvănariu’s work has been published in top-tier law review and peer-reviewed journals, including The American Journal of Comparative Law, Michigan Journal on Race & Law, Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She is completing a book manuscript on platform-based ride-hail work to be published by University of California Press. The book draws on long term, interdisciplinary ethnographic research in South Florida.
Currently in her sixteenth year of teaching, Dr. Izvǎnariu has been recognized for her work as an educator by the Kennedy Center, which awarded her the Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award, a grant that publicly recognizes American teachers by spotlighting their impact on the lives of students.
Prior to joining McGeorge, Professor Izvănariu served as an Assistant Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Dayton, Director and faculty member of Florida International University’s Research Institute for Social and Economic Policy, and Director of Research and Development and faculty member at University of California, Los Angeles’ Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.