Victoria Copeland

Victoria Copeland is a senior policy analyst at Upturn. She recently earned her PhD at the University of California-Los Angeles in Social Welfare. Her dissertation called “Dismantling the Carceral Ecosystem: Investigating Child Protection and Family Policing in Los Angeles” is a collaborative community-driven project with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and Los Angeles Community Action Network’s (LACAN) Downtown Women’s Action Coalition (DWAC) that interrogates the implications and use of data sharing and technology in the “child welfare” system. Her work is rooted in Black feminist abolitionist praxis and critical technology studies. In addition to her doctoral work, Victoria was also a graduate researcher at the UCLA Labor Center where she worked at the intersections of criminal justice and labor policy, and is an organizer with the Cops Off Campus Coalition and Let’s Get Free LA Coalition.

Victoria received her MSW from UCLA and her B.A. in Psychology-Neuroscience from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.