Jamie Morgan, PhD’23, arrived at Heller to begin the PhD program with a rich background and demonstrated passion for community organizing and advocacy in the city of South Bend, Indiana. During her tenure as a senior staff member in the Office of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, her work focused on health and human services. Jamie, a first-generation college student, received her Master of Public Affairs degree at Indiana University South Bend, and actively used her knowledge and experience to advance reproductive rights, leading her to help open the only independent abortion clinic in Northern Indiana. When she decided to take the next step in her career with a PhD focused on social justice, Jamie recognized Heller as a place where both her work and values would be supported as she completed her dissertation research on reproductive justice and abortion policy. Jamie’s doctoral studies became even more salient when the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was decided in June 2022.
“Being at Heller in the aftermath really proved to me that I had made the right choice for a program based on how they responded and how everybody was very supportive of me, not only doing the project but in accelerating my timeline to get it done in four years given the urgency of the problem.”
Building a Network of Experts
In addition to her coursework, Jamie also leaned into the connections and experience she gained at the abortion clinic in South Bend to inform her dissertation project. The first members to join her committee were University Professor Anita Hill and Professor Dan Kryder, Luis Stulberg Chair in Law and Politics, who served as mentors for a project she worked on during her first year at Heller. “Professor Kryder from the politics department became cross-affiliated with Heller so that he was able to chair my dissertation committee and help guide my methodology and theory for this project.”
Jamie also worked with Rajesh Sampath, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Justice, Rights, and Social Change, to help guide ethics and critical theory for the project, and recruited Carole Joffe ’67, a pioneer in abortion research since the 1970s, as an outside committee member.
“It just so happened that Carole is an undergraduate alumna of Brandeis, which helped me to reach out and make that connection. Having her opened up a whole new world of abortion scholars outside of my own network that were able to give me feedback. A dissertation often seems like it’s something that you do on your own, but research in general isn’t isolated, it’s a collaborative process. I wanted to make this a project in which I was relying on the experts in my life and people who’ve been working on this longer than I have to help guide this work.”
From Doctoral Student to Policy Fellow
Jamie’s years of active involvement in political science led her to apply to the American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Program, a longstanding bipartisan program on Capitol Hill that places political scientists directly in the office of congressional members, committees, or caucuses to learn firsthand what the legislative process entails.
“Instead of going the more traditional postdoctoral research route, I knew that I wanted to do more applied political science and direct policy work, which is why this was an appealing program for me.”
Through her fellowship with the APSA, Jamie landed in her current position as a policy fellow in the Office of Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). Jamie’s contributions to advancing abortion rights were recently recognized with the 2024 Carole Joffe and Stanley Henshaw Early Achievement in Social Science Research Award from the National Abortion Federation.
Advice for Current Students
Embrace the process, from start to finish: “Come in curious and ask questions, take notes, observe what is going on, and be part of that process. Now is a time that you can really explore what interests you. Even though I came in with a specific plan for a policy area, I had a very iterative process to get there. I originally thought I was going to scale my master’s thesis—a quantitative analysis of cost effects on abortion and patients traveling out of town to receive care—up to the national level because I’d only done it for midsize cities. But, while at Heller, I realized that this was the only chance I would get to really learn other methodologies. I decided I would do all of the quantitative analysis classes in addition to learning the qualitative side. You might come in with a certain idea, but it’s okay to change, grow, and use this as an opportunity to sharpen other skills.”
Advice for Prospective Students
You’re the product of the PhD, not the dissertation: “The most exciting thing about Heller is that you get to build your own adventure. A lot of programs require students to come in and find a mentor who is working on a project that interests you and that you can assist with, replicate, or build off of. At Heller, we’re able to choose our policy area and methodology, something that I don’t think many programs allow. So, while there may not be somebody who has the exact subject matter expertise in your area, you have access to Heller’s roster to help support you. At the end of the day, it’s your dissertation and you're the subject matter expert.”
Policy change is a baton race: “One of the most valuable things that Professor Hill told me is that in advancing social policy, you do what you can and then pass on the baton to the next person. I see that in the work that I’m doing and in how I engage our interns and undergraduates, so that I know that it will be sustained for future generations, because this is going to be a multi-generational problem to undo.”
Do the work that needs to be done: “It is incredibly challenging to be working in policy areas that are urgent and affect people’s lives in such deep and personal ways, knowing that most of what’s in the way of good policy is bad politics. But that shouldn’t stop us from continuing to advance knowledge in these areas and continuing to advocate for what is needed.”