Lauren O’Neil is a Research and Operations Associate for the Thurgood Marshall Institute. She formerly worked with the Richmond Public Defender’s Office, University of Virginia School of Law Library, and Richmond City Council.
Lauren’s research interests include democratic practices in the criminal-legal system and Reconstruction-era Constitutional history. Lauren’s wrote an undergraduate thesis entitled “Excluded While Inside: The diminished democratic lives and second-class citizenship of incarcerated Americans” and conducted research on the racialized psychosocial burdens placed on children in Virginia’s child welfare systems funded through a Double Hoo Research Grant.
Lauren holds a B.A. in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law from the University of Virginia and studied social science at Sciences Po in Paris, France. While at the University of Virginia, Lauren served on the Student Advisory Board of the Karsh Institute for Democracy, directed the undergraduate volunteer program at the Legal Aid Defense Fund, and was News Editor of The Cavalier Daily, the University’s student newspaper. Lauren was a Leanord Schaeffer Fellow in Government and is the recipient of the R.H. Melton First Amendment Scholarship, Peggy Rutland Marchant Memorial Scholarship, and Echols Scholarship.
