A familiar face is returning to the Immigration Policy Lab. On January 27, 2025, Duncan Lawrence, IPL’s founding executive director, will once again take the helm at Stanford, reconnecting with the organization he helped launch in 2014. From IPL’s earliest days, Duncan envisioned a social science lab that could not only generate cutting-edge research but also deliver tangible solutions to improve immigration policy worldwide. Through his creativity, boundless energy, and commitment to excellence, he transformed IPL from a bold idea into a thriving global research hub tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
In 2022, Duncan left IPL to take a role as Senior Director of Innovation at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to take on a new challenge of shaping and leading innovation, guided by social science methods, for IRC’s department serving immigrants and refugees in the United States and Europe. At IRC, Duncan helped design and launch a new virtual reception and placement (R&P) program for resettled refugees, a first-of-its-kind statewide asylum seeker services hub for Washington State, and an automated and personalized WhatsApp based messaging system for asylum seekers, while also advising NYC on the development of an action plan to better coordinate and support asylum seeker relocation. During his two years there, he remained closely connected to IPL as Senior Advisor. We are thrilled to welcome Duncan back as executive director and look forward to building on his vision to expand IPL’s impact in the years to come.
What drew you back to IPL after your time at the International Rescue Committee?
The through line for me, from IPL’s first day to its current state as a globally recognized impact lab, has been its collaborative and supportive community. It’s a culture of relaxed perfectionism that has found the right balance to produce incredibly high quality, rigorous, and impactful research, while enjoying the work and one another. That’s rare to find in any job, and I am incredibly excited to be a part of IPL’s community of staff, students, and faculty again.
I am also a strong believer that social science and social scientists have an important role to play in addressing the political, economic, and social challenges communities face around the globe. IPL has accomplished an enormous amount in its first 10 years, but I think we have just scratched the surface. I am drawn back to IPL and Stanford given the potential I see in our team and approach to improve outcomes for newcomers and host communities.
How has your experience at IRC shaped your perspective and approach to leading IPL now?
One of my first jobs after college was at a small nonprofit providing direct services to immigrants as a medical interpreter and health navigator. It sparked my interest in immigration policy and was why I went to graduate school. Almost 20 years later, I was thrilled to be able to lead innovation for the department at IRC providing services to tens of thousands of immigrants in the US and Europe. Two things from that recent experience at IRC will guide me in leading IPL. First, in co-designing three different programs on very short timelines (e.g., four weeks for a statewide program serving 10,000+ clients), I saw enormous opportunity for the IPL team to contribute behavioral science and user research expertise to the design phase. Second, while organizations like IRC have a wealth of data, there is still a huge gap in the nonprofit workforce (i.e., shortage of social and data scientists) to unlock that data to inform decision-making. While I dusted off my own coding cobwebs to try and fill this gap at IRC, I couldn’t help but think how the IPL team’s skills would be transformative for the organization. Navigating how we can better integrate with partners, reduce bureaucratic friction, and procure sustainable funding for these partner-based projects is a challenge I am excited to tackle.
This month brought a new administration and points to significant changes to U.S. immigration policy. What are your top priorities for IPL’s domestic portfolio as you begin this new chapter?
It is hard to answer this without first recognizing the direct negative impact the new administration’s proposed policies will have on newcomers, their families, and communities. I care deeply about supporting immigrant integration and from a personal perspective, I am both saddened and disheartened by the wave of executive orders we have already seen.
For IPL, we cannot be drawn into a mode of trying to respond to every new change with a new potential study or project. Our research designs and methods generally don’t lend themselves to rapid response timelines (as much as we might hope and try). For our domestic portfolio, honing in on partnerships with states, cities, and nonprofits, will be essential to advancing our mission. Additionally, we will need to thoroughly and regularly consider how new enforcement measures may impact our collection and use of data. Lastly, our evidence and impact agenda has a long time horizon, so we need to think about assessing feasibility of ongoing projects and making strategic choices about how best to allocate our limited resources. I see a big part of my role as guiding and supporting our team through this tumultuous moment.
What lessons from leading IPL previously will you carry forward, and what new ideas are you bringing to the table?
Two lessons jump out to me that I won’t soon forget. First, a necessary condition for IPL projects to be successful is to have deep and meaningful faculty engagement. Ensuring our ambition does not exceed the capacity of our faculty to engage is essential. Second, everything takes longer than expected (perhaps a life truism) and so our planning process and fundraising need to effectively integrate project cycle learning.
In terms of new ideas, there is an exciting new world of research related GenAI tools that IPL can be at the forefront of incorporating into rigorous social science, from digital human enumerators and rapid literature reviews. I also see opportunity to grow the IPL model into complementary research areas (e.g., climate and health) with faculty who can benefit from the operations infrastructure we have spent a decade creating.
What area of research and policy are you most excited to dig into with IPL?
While it represents a deeply challenging moment for immigrants, re-integration into countries of origin following deportation is an area I am very interested in exploring and I think will be highly consequential in the next four years. I am also returning to a newly developed linked nationwide health data set that IPL created with NIH support. I am excited to help lead IPL in unlocking that amazing resource to answer a wide range of immigration and health policy questions.
What are you looking forward to reconnecting with about life in the Bay Area?
Top of my list is generating new ideas while surfing with colleagues in Pacifica and Santa Cruz.
