Sarah Chamness Long

Justice Collaborator

"What we choose to measure shapes what we choose to fix—justice must begin with making people’s needs visible."

Sarah is a Senior Research Director at NORC at the University of Chicago, where she leads complex, multisite studies on rule of law and other governance and development topics. She brings deep expertise in people-centered justice, having led strategic learning and research and produced foundational knowledge products for USAID’s Rule of Law IDEAS Lab—the predecessor to the Rule of Law IDEAS CoLab. Her work with NORC also spans evaluations of law enforcement training, women’s political participation programs, anti-corruption education, and food security programs.

Previously, Sarah served as Director of Access to Justice Research at the World Justice Project (WJP), where she spearheaded a global legal needs survey in over 100 countries and authored the widely cited justice gap assessment. She also oversaw data collection for the Rule of Law Index in 120+ countries and developed a novel Environmental Governance Indicators (EGI) for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Sarah holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in French Language and Literature from the University of Maryland. She speaks English, French, and Spanish, and has presented her research at the UN, World Bank, and Harvard Law School. She has served on advisory committees for HiiL, OECD, and the World Bank, helping to advance data-driven and people-centered approaches to strengthening the rule of law.