UC Berkeley’s flagship institute for social science research

Our purpose is captured in our name: we provide an organizational framework—a “matrix”—that supports cross-disciplinary research pursued by social scientists across the University of California, Berkeley campus and beyond.

California Spotlight

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Event Date: March 18th, 2024
12:00pm-1:30pm

Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness

Register to join us on March 18 for a discussion of Professor Alex V. Barnard’s book, "Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness," which analyzes conservatorship, a legal system used to take legal guardianship over individuals deemed unable to meet their own basic needs. Barnard will be joined by advocate Lauren Rettagliata and Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law at Berkeley Law.

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New Directions

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Event Date: March 20th, 2024
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PDT

New Directions in Greening Infrastructure

Register to join us for a panel featuring three early-career scholars from UC Berkeley presenting their research on the greening infrastructure and the green energy transition. The panel will feature Johnathan Guy, PhD Candidate in Political Science; Caylee Hong, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, and Andrew Jaeger, PhD Candidate in Sociology. The panel will be moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley.

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Book Talk

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Event Date: April 1st, 2024
3:30pm-5:00pm

Nature-Made Economy: Cod, Capital and the Great Economization of the Ocean

Join us for a lecture by Tone Huse, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, who will discuss her book, which presents an analysis of how the ocean has been harnessed to become a space of capital investment and innovation. She discusses how living nature is wrested into the economy, but also shows how nature, in turn, resists, adapts to, or changes the economy.

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Lecture

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Event Date: April 4th, 2024
12:00pm

Céline Bessière: “The Gender of Capital”

Why do women in different social classes accumulate less wealth than men? Why do marital separations impoverish women while they do not prevent men from maintaining or increasing their wealth? Join us on April 4, 2024 at 12pm for "The Gender of Capital," a lecture by Céline Bessière, professor of sociology at Paris Dauphine University and a senior member at the Institut Universitaire de France. The lecture is presented by the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality.

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Lecture

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Event Date: April 17th, 2024
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PDT

Shifting the Frame: The Labors of ImageNet and AI Data

Please join us on Wednesday, April 17 at 12:00pm for an in-person lecture by Dr. Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. Presented as part of the CRELS Symposium Series.

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Panel

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Event Date: April 22nd, 2024
3:30pm-5:00pm

Caste, Education, and Social Struggle in Modern India

Please register to join us on April 22 at 3:30pm for a panel on "Caste, Education, and Social Struggle in Modern India," featuring Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University, and Shailaja Paik, the Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnatti. Moderated by Aarti Sethi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and 2023-2024 Matrix Faculty Fellow.

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Lecture

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Event Date: April 26th, 2024
1:00pm-2:00pm Pacific

Steven J. Davis: “The Big Shift to Work from Home”

Why did the shift to work from home endure, rather than reverting to pre-pandemic levels? Join us on April 26 for a lecture by Steven J. Davis, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Davis will consider how work-from-home rates vary by worker age, sex, education, parental status, industry and local population density, and why it is higher in the United States than other countries, as well as some implications for pay, productivity, and the pace of innovation.

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Authors Meet Critics

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Event Date: May 1st, 2024
12:00pm-1:30pm

Authors Meet Critics: “Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex,” Juana María Rodríguez

Join us on May 1 for an Authors Meet Critics panel on the book Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex, by Juana María Rodríguez, Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Professor Rodriguez will be joined in conversation by Clarissa Rojas, Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, and Milena Britto, Associate Professor of Literature at the Federal University of Bahia and currently a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley. The discussion will be moderated by Alberto Ledesma, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in the Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley.

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Book Talk

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Event Date: May 1st, 2024
3:30pm-5:00pm

Paul Seabright: “The Divine Economy”

Register to join us on May 1 at 3:30pm for a lecture by Paul Seabright, British Professor of Economics in the Industrial Economics Institute and Toulouse School of Economics at the University of Toulouse, France, focused on his book "The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People," a novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world. Moderated by Duncan MacRae, Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at UC Berkeley.

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Lecture

Recap

Published March 3, 2024

Understanding Land-based Psychological Trauma in Light of Epistemic Justice

 Recorded on February 8, 2024, this video features a lecture by Dr. Garret Barnwell, South African clinical psychologist and community psychology practitioner. The talk was moderated and coordinated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Listen to the talk as a podcast through the player below, or on Google […]

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Matrix On Point

Recap

Published March 1, 2024

Surveillance and Privacy in a Biometric World

Watch the video (or read the transcript) of our Matrix on Point panel on how biometric identification might change our understanding of the relationship between people, private industry, and their government. Featuring John Chuang, School of Information; Lawrence Cohen, Anthropology and South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Jennifer Urban, Berkeley Law. Moderated by Berkeley Law's Rebecca Wexler.

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published February 5, 2024

Authors Meet Critics: “The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall,” Andrew Garrett

Recorded on January 19, 2024, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel centered on the book, "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California," by Andrew Garrett, Professor of Linguistics and the Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences in the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. Professor Garrett was joined in conversation by James Clifford, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz; William Hanks, Berkeley Distinguished Chair Professor in Linguistic Anthropology; and Julian Lang (Karuk/Wiyot), a storyteller, poet, artist, graphic designer, and writer, and author of "Ararapikva: Karuk Indian Literature from Northwest California." Leanne Hinton, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, moderated.

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Book Talk

Recap

Published January 28, 2024

Vincent Bevins – “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution”

Watch the video (or listen to the podcast) of Vincent Bevins discussing his book, "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution," which tells the story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world – and what comes next. The panel was moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2.

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Podcast

Interview

Published January 13, 2024

Authoritarian Absorption: An Interview with Yan Long

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, whose research focuses on the politics of public health in China. Matrix Communications Scholar Jennie Barker spoke with Long about her forthcoming book, "Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Infectious Disease Politics in China."

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published December 19, 2023

Trevor Jackson, “Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830”

Recorded on December 5, 2023, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), by Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Professor Jackson was joined by Anat Admati, the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and William H. Janeway, Affiliated Member of the Economics Faculty at Cambridge University.  The panel was moderated by David Singh Grewal, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law.

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