Physical spaces profoundly influence community well-being. Understanding this relationship is crucial for leveraging planning and policy to foster equitable outcomes.

Recorded on November 3, 2025, this panel brought together experts to explore how thoughtful planning and strategic policy can shift power toward communities, creating conditions where all can thrive. The discussion bridged diverse perspectives on environmental conservation, design psychology, and disability studies to illuminate steps toward more just and inclusive environments.

The panel featured You-Tien Hsing, Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley; Sally Augustin, Lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces and Principal at Design With Science; and Karen Nakamura, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Disability Studies Lab at UC Berkeley. Meredith Sadin, Associate Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and Senior Researcher at the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab, moderated.

The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces, the Possibility Lab, the Center for Research on Social Change, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Anthropology.

A video and transcript of this podcast are available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/spaces-for-thriving

Conspiracy theories are a pervasive and powerful force in contemporary society, shaping public discourse and influencing real-world events. Understanding their origins, spread, and impact is crucial in navigating today's information landscape.

Recorded on October 27, 2025, this panel brought together experts to delve into the multifaceted world of conspiracy theories. Drawing on diverse academic perspectives, the discussion explored the nature of conspiracy theories, their societal implications, and how they are understood and addressed.

The panel featured Michael M. Cohen, Associate Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at UC Berkeley, and Tim Tangherlini, Professor in the Department of Scandinavian and the School of Information at UC Berkeley. Lakshmi Sarah, journalist and lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, moderated.

Matrix On Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public.

This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Scandinavian, African American Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory.

A video and transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/conspiracy-theories.

For this episode of the Matrix Podcast, recorded in Fall 2023, Julia Sizek interviewed Morgan P. Vickers, an Assistant Professor of Race/Racialization in the Department of Law, Societies & Justice at the University of Washington. Vickers received their Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and their B.A. in American Studies, Communication Studies, and Non-Fiction Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Vickers is currently a Content Editor for Environmental History Now and an Executive Board member of the Black Geographies Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). They previously worked with The Black Geographic, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Community Histories Workshop, A Red Record, and the Landscape Specialty Group of AAG.

The interview focused on Vickers' research on drowned towns of the Santee-Cooper Project in South Carolina, wherein 901 families were displaced in the name of New Deal "progress." Vickers' work highlights New Deal infrastructures, transformed ecologies (notably, swamplands), and dispossessed (racialized) populations in order to challenge myths of universal progress and narratives of purportedly moral geographies.

Thematically, Vickers' work contemplates Black ecologies, placemaking, federal dam and reservoir projects, racial capitalism, moral geographies, community memory studies, and questions of belonging.

Transcript

A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/morgan-vickers

Recorded on April 1, 2025, this video features a talk by AJ Alvero, a computational sociologist at Cornell University, presenting findings from an analysis of parole hearing transcripts in California.

This talk is part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. The talk was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences (BIDS).

Abstract

In California, candidates for parole are able to present their case with the support of an attorney to commissioners appointed by the state. These hearings are professionally transcribed, making them highly amenable to a variety of social scientific questions and computational text analysis. In this talk, I will discuss a large project analyzing every parole hearing transcript in California that occurred from November 2007 until November 2019, along with a wealth of administrative data, some of which was obtained after successfully suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In some of our early work, we find that patterns in the text based on the words being used and who is using them (e.g., words used by the parole commissioner) have stronger explanatory power than variables used in past studies. To conclude, I will discuss forthcoming work which takes advantage of the unique structure of the transcripts.

Transcript

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/AJ-Alvero

Recorded on March 18, 2025, this video features a talk by Alexander F. Roehrkasse, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. Roehrkasse's research focuses on inequality, victimization, punishment, families and children, and quantitative and historical methods.

His work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Demography, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Advances, Social Forces, and other leading journals. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley.

This talk is part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics.

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences (BIDS).

Abstract

The dynamics of inequality in mass incarceration are rapidly changing and poorly understood. In this talk, I present new evidence of declining Black–White inequality and skyrocketing educational inequality in U.S. prison admissions. I qualify these findings by documenting vast racial disparities in indirect contact with the carceral system through families and neighborhoods. I conclude by discussing possible causes of recent inequality trends and potential research strategies for identifying them.

Transcript

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/roehrkasse

Psychedelics are steadily moving from the fringes of counterculture to the heart of mainstream society, driven by a growing body of research and shifting public perception. Once relegated to underground movements, substances like psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA are now being explored for their potential in treating mental health conditions such as depression, PTSD, and anxiety.

High-profile studies at institutions like Johns Hopkins and Stanford have highlighted their therapeutic benefits, while cities like Denver and Oakland have decriminalized their use. In addition, psychedelic retreats, wellness practices, and even art and tech industries are embracing these substances as tools for creativity, self-discovery, and healing. As psychedelics shed their stigma, they are catalyzing a broader conversation about mental health, spirituality, and the boundaries of human consciousness.

Recorded on March 6, 2025, this panel featured Diana Negrin, Lecturer of Geography at UC Berkeley; David Presti, Professor of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley; Charles Hirschkind, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley; and Graham Pechenik, a patent attorney and founder of Calyx Law. Poulomi Saha, Associate Professor of English and Co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, moderated.

Matrix On Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation.

This event was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, the Program in Critical Theory, Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, the Center for Research on Social Change, the UC Berkeley Department of English, and the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

A transcript of this panel is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mainstreaming-psychedelics

 

One measure of the fragile state of many democracies is the way in which public universities have come under attack around the world. A new podcast series, produced as part of the Global Democracy Commons project, seeks to address the myriad forces seeking to foreclose public universities as spaces of critique and democratic protest across the globe.

The series explores diverse trends such as related to the defunding of higher education; its redefinition as a private not a public good; the increasing authoritarian nature of university management; the use of culture wars and discourses of civility to police classrooms; the waves of layoffs and closures of departments and programs; and the attempts to delimit academic freedom, free speech, and rights of assembly and protest.

We hope our conversations with those who work in higher education around the world will allow us to consider the degree to which the university has become the canary in the coal mine for the fate of democracy.

Episode 3

As universities across England and Wales continue to announce redundancies, close departments and programs we talk to political theorist Lorna Finlayson about the nature of the crisis, why academics are relatively restrained in their responses to it, and how students offer some hope for alternative visions of higher education.

 

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/finlayson.

As wildfires grow more frequent and devastating, they expose vulnerabilities in infrastructure, governance, and community preparedness. Tackling this escalating threat demands interdisciplinary solutions that address not just the immediate risks but also the broader systemic changes driving extreme weather events.

Recorded on February 18, 2025, this Matrix on Point discussion (presented by UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix) featured Christopher Ansell, Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM); Kenichi Soga, Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure; and Marta Gonzalez, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning. Louise Comfort, Professor Emerita and Project Scientist, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, moderated.

This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning, the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).

The panel was presented by US Berkeley's Social Science Matrix as part of Matrix On Point, a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public.

Transcript

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/LA-wildfires

Recorded on February 10, 2025, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel centered on the book Society Despite the State: Reimagining Geographies of Order, by Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre, Assistant Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley, and Anthony Ince, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Geography at Cardiff University and British Academy Mid-Career Fellow.

Professor Barrera de la Torre was joined in-person to introduce the book, and Professor Ince presented remotely. The authors were joined in conversation by Dylan John Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, and Anna Stilz, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. Jake Kosek, Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley, moderated.

The Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. These events are free and open to the public.

The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry.

About the Book

The logic of the state has come to define social and spatial relations, embedding itself into our understandings of the world and our place in it. Anthony Ince and Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre challenge this logic as the central pivot around which knowledge and life orbit, by exposing its vulnerabilities, contradictions and, crucially, alternatives.

"Society Despite the State" disrupts the dominance of state-centred ways of thinking by presenting a radical political geography approach inspired by anarchist thought and practice. The book draws on a broad range of voices that have affinities with Western anarchism but also exceed it. This book challenges radicals and scholars to confront and understand the state through a way of seeing and a set of intellectual tools that the authors call 'post-statism' In de-centring the state's logics and ways of operating, the authors incorporate a variety of threads to identify alternative ways to understand and challenge statism's effects on our political imaginations.

Transcript

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/society-despite-the-state.

Julia Sizek is a writer and anthropologist who studies the California desert and rural land management more broadly. Her work focuses on the politics of land in the California desert, including: the cultural politics of conservation acquisition in the railroad checkerboard, the rhetoric of environmental impact reporting, and the legal geographies of off-highway vehicle use. In addition to this work, Julia has also led the qualitative portion of the 30-year social and economic monitoring for the Northwest Forest Plan. Previously, Julia was a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, running programs, planning events, and interviewing social scientists about their research. Julia also hosted the Matrix Podcast.

In this interview, recorded in Spring 2024, Sizek talked with Marion Fourcade, Director of Social Science Matrix, about her paper "Impossible evidence: The legal dismal cycle of regulating off-roading in the California desert," published in Geoforum. The paper traces a 40-year battle over off-road vehicle use in the California desert through the concept of "impossible evidence," evidence that is legally demanded but cannot or does not exist. In a forthcoming summer 2025 article in Environmental History, Julia builds on this story by detailing the rise of the "Bureau of Livestock and Motorcycles" in California.

 

A transcript of this episode can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/sizek-interview.

Fringe politics today is highly diverse and dynamic, reflecting the rapid social, technological, and economic changes of the 21st century. While the term "fringe" suggests ideas or movements outside the political mainstream, many fringe ideologies have increasingly influenced, or even reshaped, national and global political landscapes.

Recorded on February 4, 2025, this panel brought together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of geography, anthropology, and sociology for a discussion on politics on the fringe through the lens of such topics as QAnon, religious studies, and California secessionism.

The panel featured Josefina Valdes Lanas, PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley; Alexis Wood, PhD student in Geography at UC Berkeley; and Peter Forberg, PhD student in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Paul Pierson, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, moderated.

The event was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, the Department of Sociology, the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI), and the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies.

A transcript of this panel is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/fringe-politics.

As one of the nation's agricultural powerhouses, California's farming industry stands at a critical juncture. Climate change, labor availability and migration, and rapidly evolving technologies are reshaping the landscape of agriculture in the Golden State.

This panel, presented as part of the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix California Spotlight series, brought together experts to analyze these changes and explore their implications for agricultural communities and rural economies. The panel featured Federico Castillo, Lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and Project Scientist at the College of Natural Resources; Julie Guthman, Distinguished Professor Emerita at UC Santa Cruz; and Eric Edwards, Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis. Timothy Bowles, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, moderated.

The panel was co-sponsored by the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society (CSTMS); the Berkeley Food Institute; the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI); and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/future_CA_agriculture

On October 15, 2025, Matrix hosted an Authors Meet Critics panel on the book Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence, by Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley.

Professor Douglass was joined in conversation by Salar Mameni, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, and Henry Washington, Jr., Assistant Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Courtney Desiree Morris, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley, moderated.

The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Race and Gender, the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and the Department of Ethnic Studies.

The Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars.

About the Book

In this incisive book, Douglass interrogates the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery and finds it not only inseverable but also fundamental to the structural predicaments facing Blackness in the present. Douglass contends that the sexual violability of slaves is often misappropriated by frameworks on sexual violence that privilege its occurrences as a question of ethics, sexual agency, and feminine orders of gendering. Rather, this book foregrounds Blackness as engendered by sexual violence, which forcefully (re)produces Blackness, corporeally and conceptually, as a condition that lacks the capacity to ontologically distinguish its suffering from what it means to be human.

By employing and critically revising Black feminist theory and Afro-pessimism, Douglass reveals that engaging primarily with the sexualization of the slave forces theories of sexual violence to interrogate why this violence — one of the most prevalent under slavery — continues to lack a grammar of fundamental redress. There are no reparations struggles for the generational transfer of sexual violation and the inability of present frameworks to rectify the sexual stains of slavery lies precisely in the fact that what made this history possible continues to haunt arrangements of life today. "Engendering Blackness" urgently articulates the way our present understandings of Blackness and humanness are bound by this vexed sexual history.

 

For a transcript of this panel, please see https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/engendering-blackness.

The American election closed out a year of momentous elections. Almost two decades on from the financial crisis of 2007 that helped unleash a wave of authoritarian, populist, and nativist movements in global democracies, a range of social and political forces have reshaped elections around the world.

What do the election results tell us about the health or fragility of global democracy, and how might we better understand the outcome of the American election as part of a broader global process?

Recorded on November 21, 2024, this panel featured a group of UC Berkeley scholars discussing the 2024 elections in different parts of the world. The panel featured James Vernon, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor, History; Alison Post, Associate Professor, Political Science; Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor, History; Aarti Sethi, Assistant Professor, Anthropology; and Kwanele Sosibo, Lecturer, Art History.

Presented as part of the Global Democracy Commons initiative.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/making-sense-elections.

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Tara Chandra, a consultant and independent researcher who received a PhD in in Political Science with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from UC Berkeley. Chandra's research focuses on the intersection of gender and international security. Prior to beginning her PhD, she worked in foreign policy in Washington, D.C. She holds a Master's degree in Global Affairs from Yale and a BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

The interview was conducted by Julia Sizek, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Social Science Matrix, and focused on Chandra's work on gendered violence in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. [Note that the interview was conducted while Chandra was still a PhD candidate.]

A transcript of this episode is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/tara-chandra.

In this "New Directions" panel, recorded on December 2, 2024, an interdisciplinary group of UC Berkeley graduate students explored the evolving dynamics of work, management, and labor organization.

The panel featured research by three current Berkeley PhD students: William Darwell (Jurisprudence and Social Policy), Kristy Kim (Economics), and Vera Parra (Sociology). The panel was moderated by John Logan, Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

The presenters' studies focus on such topics as the impact of pension systems on workforce participation, labor union organizing in automotive supply chains across North America, and how different political and economic systems influence workplace management practices.

This event was co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and the Berkeley Law Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. 

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/new-directions-labor.

Recorded on December 3, 2024, this podcast episode features an Authors Meet Critics panel on Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States by Stephanie L. Canizales, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.

Professor Canizales was joined in conversation by Kristina Lovato, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, and Caitlin Patler, Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Sarah Song, Professor at Berkeley Law, moderated.

This event was presented by Social Science Matrix as part of the Authors Meet Critics book series, which features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. These events are free and open to the public.

The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), the Center for Race and Gender, the Othering and Belonging Institute, and the Latinx Research Center.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/sin-padres.

Recorded on November 13, 2024, this Authors Meet Critics" panel centered on the book Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Epidemic Politics in China, by Yan Long, Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology.

Professor Long was joined in conversation by Matthew Kohrman, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University; and Rachel E. Stern, Professor of Law and Political Science at Berkeley Law, and the Pamela P. Fong and Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies. The panel was moderated by Tom Gold, Professor of Sociology Emeritus at UC Berkeley.

The panel was presented as part of the Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series, which features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars.

About the Book

Authoritarian Absorption portrays the rebuilding of China's pandemic response system through its anti-HIV/AIDS battle from 1978 to 2018. Going beyond the conventional domestic focus, Yan Long analyzes the influence of foreign interventions which challenged the post-socialist state's inexperience with infectious diseases and pushed it towards professionalizing public health bureaucrats and embracing more liberal, globally aligned technocratic measures. This transformation involved a mix of confrontation and collaboration among transnational organizations, the Chinese government, and grassroots movements, which turned epidemics into a battleground for enhancing the state's domestic control and international status.

Foreign interveners effectively mobilized China's AIDS movement and oriented activists towards knowledge-focused epistemic activities to propel the insertion of Western rules, knowledge, and practices into the socialist systems. Yet, Chinese bureaucrats played this game to their advantage by absorbing some AIDS activist subgroups—notably those of urban HIV-negative gay men—along with their foreign-trained expertise and technical proficiency into the state apparatus. This move allowed them to expand bodily surveillance while projecting a liberal façade for the international audience.

Drawing on longitudinal-ethnographic research, Long argues against a binary view of Western liberal interventions as either success or failure, highlighting instead the paradoxical outcomes of such efforts. On one hand, they can bolster public health institutions in an authoritarian context, a development pivotal to China's subsequent handling of COVID-19 and instrumental in advancing the rights of specific groups, such as urban gay men. On the other hand, these interventions may reinforce authoritarian control and further marginalize certain populations—such as rural people living with HIV/AIDS and female sex workers—within public health systems. 

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/authoritarian-absorption-panel.

Gold Okafor is a PhD candidate in social and personality psychology at UC Berkeley. She investigates racial and gender disparities through emotion research. Her research questions include, "how does the race and gender of an emotional person influence the judgments of the emotional person?" For example, how is an angry Black woman judged differently from an angry White woman, and what are the downstream consequences? And how do we accurately measure mindfulness, an emotion regulation strategy, within Black Americans?

Okafor is Ford Predoctoral Fellow and a recipient of an American Psychological Foundation Scholarship. Her past papers include "Measuring Mindfulness in Black Americans: A Psychometric Validation of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire." This interview was conducted by Julia Sizek, who was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at Social Science Matrix.

A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/gold-okafor.

Recorded on October 25, 2024, this panel examined the shifting demographic and political forces that are redefining the traditional bases of the Democratic and Republican parties and their efforts to build new electoral coalitions. Panelists analyzed voter trends and realignment along key dimensions, including gender, age, race and ethnicity, and explored how issues like the economy, abortion, immigration, and threats to democracy are motivating different segments of the electorate.

The panel featured Ian Haney López, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley; David Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley; and Omar Wasow, Assistant Professor in Department of Political Science. Moderated by G. Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies (by courtesy), and Co-Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, the Institute of Governmental Studies, and the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies.

Matrix on Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public. 

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/shifting-alignments.

Global Democracy Commons Podcast: Episode 2

In the run up to the American election we talked to Todd Wolfson, the new President of AAUP, about how public disinvestment from higher education and the culture wars have transformed colleges in ways that make them less democratic places — and imperil democracy across the country.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/todd-wolfson.

 

About the Series

One measure of the fragile state of many democracies is the way in which public universities have come under attack around the world. A new monthly podcast series, produced as part of the Global Democracy Commons project, seeks to address the myriad forces seeking to foreclose public universities as spaces of critique and democratic protest across the globe.

The series explores diverse trends such as related to the defunding of higher education; its redefinition as a private not a public good; the increasing authoritarian nature of university management; the use of culture wars and discourses of civility to police classrooms; the waves of layoffs and closures of departments and programs; and the attempts to delimit academic freedom, free speech, and rights of assembly and protest.

We hope our conversations with those who work in higher education around the world will allow us to consider the degree to which the university has become the canary in the coal mine for the fate of democracy.

 

Over the past few years, Arlie Hochschild has been in conversation with citizens of Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia; Jenny Reardon has been biking through her home state of Kansas, talking to farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the prairie; and Lisa Pruitt has straddled the rural-urban divide over the course of her life in Arkansas and California and as a scholar of rural legal access.

As the nation braced for a decisive election, this conversation — recorded on October 21 — sought to illuminate the frequently overlooked yet politically potent voices emanating from America's rural heartlands and small towns. The panel was moderated by Cihan Tuğal, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, and co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS), and the Berkeley Center for Right Wing Studies.

About the Speakers

Arlie R. Hochschild is Professor Emerita in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, details rise of the right. Her latest book, 'Stolen Pride: loss, shame and the rise of the right' is based on six years of field work in eastern Kentucky and focuses on the politics of pride and shame. In particular, it focuses on the distress caused by "structural shaming" in an era of post-70s economic decline, a shame which enhances the appeal of Trump's politics of displacement.

Lisa Pruitt is Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Davis. Pruitt's work reveals how the economic, spatial, and social features of rural locales, (e.g., material spatiality, lack of anonymity) profoundly shape the lives of residents, including the junctures at which they encounter the law. This work also considers how rurality inflects dimensions of gender, race, and ethnicity, including through a lens of whiteness studies and critical race theory.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

Cihan Tuğal (moderator) studies social movements, populism, capitalism, democracy, and religion. In his recent publications, he discusses the far right, neoliberalization, state capitalism, and populist performativity in Turkey, the United States, Hungary, Poland, India, and the Philippines. Tuğal is currently working on a book that will incorporate these case studies, along with an analysis of populism in Brazil. He has also initiated a team project to study the ecological crisis of capitalism, with special emphasis on the role of labor and community struggles in developing sustainable energy.

Watch the panel above or on YouTube.

Listen to the panel as a podcast below or on Apple Podcasts.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/voices-heartland.

Recorded on October 9, 2024, this video features an Authors Meet Critics panel on the book Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era, by Paul Pierson, the John Gross Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, and Eric Schickler, the Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

The authors were joined in conversation by Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and Didi Kuo, a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. Mark Danner, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, moderated.

The Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics event series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. These events are free and open to the public.

About Partisan Nation

The ground beneath American political institutions has moved, with national politics subsuming and transforming the local. As a result, American democracy is in trouble. In this paradigm-shifting book, political scientists Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler bring a sharp new perspective to today's challenges. Attentive to the different coalitions, interests, and incentives that define the Democratic and Republican parties, they show how contemporary polarization emerged in a rapidly nationalizing country and how it differs from polarization in past eras.

In earlier periods, three key features of the political landscape—state parties, interest groups, and media—varied locally and reinforced the nation's stark regional diversity. But this began to change in the 1960s as the two parties assumed clearer ideological identities and the power of the national government expanded, raising the stakes of conflict. Together with technological and economic change, these developments have reconfigured state parties, interest groups, and media in self-reinforcing ways. The result is that today's polarization is self-perpetuating—and intensifying.

Partisan Nation offers a powerful caution. As a result of this polarization, America's political system is distinctly and acutely vulnerable to an authoritarian movement emerging in the contemporary Republican Party, which has both the motive and the means to exploit America's unusual Constitutional design. Combining the precision and acuity characteristic of their earlier work, Pierson and Schickler explain what these developments mean for American governance and democracy.

Watch the video on YouTube.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/partisan-nation.

Recorded on September 22, 2025, this video features a talk by Davon Norris, Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) and Faculty Associate at the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics at the University of Michigan.

Professor Norris's research is broadly oriented to understanding how our ways of determining what is valuable informs patterns of inequality with an acute focus on racism and racial inequality. Often, this means he studies the history, construction, and operation of various ratings, scores, and rankings whether that be at the government level (i.e., government credit ratings) or individual level (i.e., consumer credit scores). Other work that comes out of this interest in valuation processes further probes questions related to finance and the role of credit and debt in shaping inequality.

His research has been published in outlets such as Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Social Problems, and Sociological Forum, and has received awards from the Future of Privacy Forum and American Sociological Association. His work has been funded by the American Sociological Association. Davon received his Bachelor of Science in Accounting (2014), Master of Arts in Sociology (2018) and Ph.D. (2022) in Sociology all from The Ohio State University. 

This talk, "Legitimation by (Mis)identification: Credit, Discrimination, and the Racial Epistemology of Algorithmic Expansion," was presented as part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. (Learn more at: https://crels.berkeley.edu/.)

The event was co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) Tech Cluster, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), and the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu.

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/davon-norris

War is back. Open military operations in Europe and the Middle East have driven an escalation of geopolitical tensions in those regions. The conduct of warfare is changing, too, fueled by the deployment and sometimes live-testing of new technologies. Meanwhile, a new cold war seems to be settling in. The growth of China's economic power and worldwide influence has triggered proliferating sovereignty disputes and defensive trade and security policies.

In this Matrix on Point panel, UC Berkeley experts discussed these and other transformations, and offered their views on what to expect in the short to medium term.

Recorded on September 30, 2024, the panel featured Michaela Mattes, Associate Professor in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley; Andrew W. Reddie, Associate Research Professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and Founder of the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab; and Daniel Sargent, Associate Professor of History and Public Policy at UC Berkeley, and Co-Director for the Institute of International Studies.

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Institute of International Studies, the panel was moderated by Vinod Aggarwal, Distinguished Professor and Alann P. Bedford Endowed Chair in Asian Studies, in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science; Affiliated Professor at the Haas School of Business; Director of the Berkeley Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC); and Fellow in the Public Law and Policy Center at Berkeley Law School, all at UC Berkeley.

Matrix on Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public. Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/war-is-back.

One measure of the fragile state of many democracies is the way in which public universities have come under attack around the world. A new monthly podcast series, produced as part of the Global Democracy Commons project, seeks to address the myriad forces seeking to foreclose public universities as spaces of critique and democratic protest across the globe.   The series explores diverse trends such as related to the defunding of higher education; its redefinition as a private not a public good; the increasing authoritarian nature of university management; the use of culture wars and discourses of civility to police classrooms; the waves of layoffs and closures of departments and programs; and the attempts to delimit academic freedom, free speech, and rights of assembly and protest.   We hope our conversations with those who work in higher education around the world will allow us to consider the degree to which the university has become the canary in the coal mine for the fate of democracy. Episode 1: Understanding Academic Freedom: Interview with Hank Reichman To mark the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, and the introduction of new restrictions on protests at the University of California and at over a 100 campuses across the U.S., our first podcast explores the relationship of free speech and academic freedom to the fragile history of democracy in America over the past century.    James Vernon, Director of the Global Democracy Commons, talks to Hank Reichman, Professor Emeritus at Cal State East Bay and a former AAUP vice-president who chaired its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure for almost a decade, from 2012-2021. A new edition of his last book, Understanding Academic Freedom, will be out in Spring 2025.   A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/hank-reichman.

On Sept. 16, 2024, Social Science Matrix hosted an Authors Meet Critics panel focused on the book Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex, by Juana María Rodríguez, Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

In Puta Life, Juana María Rodríguez probes the ways that sexual labor and Latina sexuality become visual phenomena. Drawing on state archives, illustrated biographies, documentary films, photojournalistic essays, graphic novels, and digital spaces, she focuses on the figure of the puta—the whore, that phantasmatic figure of Latinized feminine excess.

Rodríguez's eclectic archive features the faces and stories of women whose lives have been mediated by sex work's stigmatization and criminalization—washerwomen and masked wrestlers, porn stars and sexiles. Rodríguez examines how visual tropes of racial and sexual deviance expose feminine subjects to misogyny and violence, attuning our gaze to how visual documentation shapes perceptions of sexual labor.

For this panel, Professor Rodriguez was joined in conversation by Clarissa Rojas, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, and Courtney Desiree Morris, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley. The discussion was moderated by Alberto Ledesma, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in the Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley.

The Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. The panel was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for Race and Gender (CRG), the UC Berkeley Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/puta-life/

While recent news has highlighted how prisoners have fought wildfires, prison labor is not a new phenomenon. Although incarcerated people have built highways, dams, and buildings, their contributions to American infrastructure are often made invisible. Both Elizabeth Hargrett and Xander Lenc have studied how prisoner labor has shaped America's infrastructure with a focus on North Carolina and California. They co-directed the Carceral Labor Mapping Project, a 2023-2024 Research Team at Social Science Matrix. 

Elizabeth Hargrett is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley's History Department, and holds a Masters degree in History from EHESS in Paris. Her dissertation explores North Carolina's history of convict labor, and shows how incarcerated labor shaped (and in turn, was shaped by) the state's highway systems, landscapes, and scenic tourism industries in the early decades of the 20th century. 

Xander Lenc is a PhD Candidate in UC Berkeley's Geography Department, where he studies how prisons have adopted their spatial patterns—and their problems—from other economic and intellectual spheres, from naval architecture to ecology to mining to electrical engineering. In doing so, he argues that any meaningful solution to mass incarceration in the United States requires a complete overhaul of our geography.

An edited transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/prisoner-labor-legacies.

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features Matrix Postdoctoral Fellow Julia Sizek interviewing Ross Doll and Coleman Mahler, two scholars from different disciplines whose work focuses on the modernization of China.

Ross Doll is Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography. He researches agrarian change in Asia drawing on political ecology, cultural geography, and resilience ecology. Based on long-term ethnography, his current research considers the origins and influence of contemporary state-led agricultural modernization in the Yangzi Delta region of China, focusing on food security, landscape, and rural politics. Dr. Doll teaches courses on the geographies of natural resources, global and Asian development, and global poverty. He holds a PhD in Geography and a MA in China Studies from the University of Washington.

Coleman R. Mahler is a PhD Candidate in Modern Chinese History at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation is a history of information and truth in postwar China and Taiwan, exploring how governments across the Taiwan Strait gathered and analyzed agricultural data, and how these mass data gathering projects produced new understandings and practices of truth-making. He has published in journals including The PRC History Review and the Journal of Cold War Studies (forthcoming).

A transscript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/agricultural-modernization.

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Jenna Wells and Felicia Zerwas, who at the time of the interview were Ph.D. candidates in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology. The interview was conducted by Julia Sizek, Matrix Postdoctoral Fellow.

Jenna Wells is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. At the time of the interview, she was a Ph.D. candidate in the clinical science area at the University of California, Berkeley and a clinical psychology intern at the University of California, San Francisco, specializing in neuropsychological assessment of older adults. Her research examines interpersonal emotional phenomena in connection with aging and mental and physical health, with a focus on dementia caregiving relationships. She is interested in identifying factors that are associated with individual differences in caregivers' health and well-being, and ultimately, hopes this work will inform the development of targeted, evidence-based interventions for caregivers of people with dementia.

Felicia Zerwas is currently a postdoctoral researcher working with a team at New York University on the community science initiative, MindHive. At the time of the interview, she was a Ph.D. candidate in the social-personality psychology area at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on understanding the role that emotions play in the formation and maintenance of close relationships. Since we rarely experience emotions in isolation, she examines how individuals experience and express their emotions in the presence of others, like a friend or romantic partner. Ultimately, she is interested in how those emotion related processes influence measures of relationship quality such as intimacy, perceived support, and conflict.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/dyadic-emotions/

For this episode of the Matrix Podcast, J.T. Jamieson, a 2022-2023 Matrix Communications Scholar, interviewed Bernadette Pérez, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Pérez is a historian of the United States who specializes in the histories of Latinx and Indigenous peoples in the West. Her current research focuses on migrant sugar beet workers in Colorado, and explores intersections between race, environment, labor, migration, and colonialism in the post Civil War.

Before joining the faculty at Berkeley, Pérez was the Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Ethnicity Studies at the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts from 2017-2020, where she taught courses in History and American Studies. She has received fellowships and awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Organization of American Historians, and the Western History Association. In 2018, her dissertation won the W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.

A transcript of this interview is availabile at: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/bernadette-perez/.

Contemporary writers and activists have described the climate crisis as, in part, a crisis of the imagination, of culture, and of storytelling. Recorded on March 11, 2024, this panel featured a group of authors and scholars of different genres — science fiction, journalism, history, literary fiction, and comedy — discussing how the climate crisis has impacted their craft and what practices of storytelling have to offer us at this pivotal moment in human history. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of English, the Department of History, and the Berkeley School of Journalism.

Panelists

Daniel Gumbiner is a novelist and editor based in Oakland. His first book, The Boatbuilder, was nominated for the National Book Award. His new novel, Fire in the Canyon, was published by Astra House in 2023. He is the Editor of The Believer.

Annalee Newitz is a science fiction writer and science journalist. They are the author of nine books including, most recently, the science fiction novel The Terraformers. They are a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, a columnist in the The New Scientist, and the co-host of an award-winning podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct.

Aaron Sachs is a professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of several books, most recently, Stay Cool: Why Dark Comedy Matters in the Fight against Climate Change (NYU Press, 2023).

Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, and activist, and a graduate of the Berkeley School of Journalism. She has written more than twenty books, including Orwell's Roses; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Together with Thelma Young Lutunatabua, Solnit edited the 2023 collection Not too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.

Rebecca Herman (moderator) is associate professor in the History Department at UC Berkeley and author of Cooperating with the Colossus (Oxford University Press, 2022). She is currently working on a book about the unlikely ban on mining in Antarctica, told through the stories of the military wives and children, artists, writers, activists, soldiers, and scientists who traveled South in growing numbers during the 1970s and 80s.

A video and transcript of this event are available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/storytelling-climate

 

As the effects of climate change become more obvious, moving away from fossil fuels has only become more urgent. But to do so, new energy sources – and new infrastructure – are desperately needed.

Recoreded on March 20, 2024, this panel features three early-career scholars from UC Berkeley presenting their research on the greening infrastructure and the green energy transition. The panel included Johnathan Guy, PhD Candidate in Political Science; Caylee Hong, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, and Andrew Jaeger, PhD Candidate in Sociology. The panel was moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Co-Sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, the Berkeley Climate Change Network, and the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative.

Presented by Social Science Matrix, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of California, Berkeley.

A video and transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/greening-infrastructure/

Recorded on March 18, 2024, this panel focused on Professor Alex V. Barnard's book, Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness. The book analyzes conservatorship, a legal system used to take legal guardianship over individuals deemed unable to meet their own basic needs. This controversial system, which has come under fire from civil liberties and disability rights groups, is at the center of state policies for mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. Through interviews with policy makers, professionals, families, and conservatees, Barnard shows how the system operates, and its many shortcomings.

At this event — part of the Social Science Matrix California Spotlight series — Professor Barnard was joined by Lauren Rettagliata, whose comments on her lived experience of the system complement Barnard's discussion of his research. The discussion was moderated by Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law at Berkeley Law.

The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI), Department of Sociology, and the Center for the Study of Law and Society.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/conservatorship.

About the Speakers

Alex V. Barnard is an assistant professor of sociology at NYU, holding a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley. His work examines cross-national differences in the trajectory of people with severe mental illness between different institutions of care and control. His book, Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness was published by Columbia University Press in 2023. He is currently working on another book, tentatively titled, Mental States: Ordering Psychiatric Disorder in France.

Lauren Rettagliata is the mom of four sons, the oldest has Autism, the youngest has Schizophrenia. Almost five decades ago, she worked on committees that formulated federal legislation that ensconced into federal law protection for a free appropriate education for all children. Lauren found herself back home in California at the time her youngest son was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. The world changed for her. She had to search the streets and delta for her son who spent many years homeless and fell into drug addiction. Her son has been conserved. Lauren's advocacy now centers around Housing That Heals.

Moderator

Jonathan Simon joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2003 as part of the J.D., JSP, and Legal Studies programs. He teaches in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, criminology, legal studies and the sociology of law. Simon's scholarship concerns the role of crime and criminal justice in governing contemporary societies, risk and the law, and the history of the interdisciplinary study of law. His published works include over seventy articles and book chapters, and three single authored monographs, including: Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass (University of Chicago 1993, winner of the American Sociological Association's sociology of law book prize, 1994), Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (Oxford University Press 2007, winner of the American Society of Criminology, Hindelang Award 2010) and Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America (New Press 2014).

Borders reflect the many social, historical, and political forces that shape global movement and identity. While borders often suggest fixed lines of division, the experiences within and around them increasingly influence national and global understandings of belonging, sovereignty, and human rights.

Recorded on October 1, 2025, this panel together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of history, sociology, and ethnic studies for a discussion on borders and their impact, particularly through the lens of migration, mobility, and resistance across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The panel featured Carlotta Wright de la Cal, PhD Candidate in History; Adriana Ramirez, PhD Candidate in Sociology; and Irene Franco Rubio, PhD Candidate in Ethnic Studies. Hidetaka Hirota, Professor of History, moderated.

The Social Science Matrix New Directions event series features research presentations by graduate students from different social science disciplines. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, Department of Ethnic Studies, and Department of History.

For a transcript of this podcast, visit https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/borderlands.

 

Recorded on March 4, 2024, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics, by Professor Salar Mameni, Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies. Professor Mameni was joined by Mayanthi Fernando, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz; Sugata Ray, Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art and Architecture in the Departments of History of Art and South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley; and Stefania Pandolfo, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

The panel was co-sponsored by the Program in Critical Theory, the Art Research Center, the Center for Race and Gender, the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, the Department of Art History, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the South Asia Art Initiative at the Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative.

About the Book

In Terracene, Professor Salar Mameni historicizes the popularization of the scientific notion of the Anthropocene alongside the emergence of the global war on terror. Mameni theorizes the Terracene as an epoch marked by a convergence of racialized militarism and environmental destruction. Both the Anthropocene and the war on terror centered the antagonist figures of the Anthropos and the terrorist as responsible for epochal changes in the new geological and geopolitical world orders. In response, Mameni shows how the Terracene requires radically new engagements with terra (the earth), whose intelligence resides in matters such as oil and phenomena like earthquakes and fires. Drawing on the work of artists whose practices interrogate histories of settler-colonial and imperial interests in land and resources in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Palestine, and other regions most affected by the war on terror, Mameni offers speculative paths into the aesthetics of the Terracene.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/terracene

Kimberly Cecilia Burke, a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley, researches the relationships between institutional violence and social stratification, utilizing multi-level mixed-methods analysis. Her dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how Black-White interracial couples understand and experience police violence in their relationships. Her current research aims to determine how the dynamics of intimate partnerships can perpetuate and challenge patterns of racial inequality structured by police violence. As a scholar-activist, Kimberly is guided by feminist ethics of love and mutuality and seeks to bring insights from social science to the broader public to advance social equity.

For this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek interviewed Burke about her research.

A transcript can be found at: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/structural-determinants-of-police-violence-interview-with-kimberly-cecilia-burke/.

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Zahra Hayat, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and is also trained as a lawyer with a background in intellectual property.

Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Hayat about her research on pharmaceutical access in the global South, particularly in Pakistan, and the regimes of price and property on which such access is contingent.

A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/the-scandal-of-access-an-interview-with-zahra-hayat/.

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Daniel Lobo, a PhD student in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology and a 2022-2023 Matrix Communications Scholar, interviewed Ryan Brutger, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

Professor Brutger obtained his PhD in politics at Princeton University and was previously an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is broadly interested in international relations and foreign policy. His research spans international political economy, international law, international security and political psychology, examining the domestic politics of international negotiations and cooperation.

Lobo spoke with Professor Brutger about his new article, Litigation for Sale: Private Firms and WTO Dispute Escalation, which presents a theory of lobbying by firms for trade liberalization, not through political contributions, but instead through contributions to the litigation process at the World Trade Organization. "In this 'litigation for sale' model, firms signal information about the strength and value of potential cases, and the government selects cases based on firms' signals," Brutger wrote in the paper's abstract. "Firms play a key role in monitoring and seeking enforcement of international trade law, which increases a state's ability to pursue the removal of trade barriers and helps explain the high success rate for WTO complainants. The theory's implications are consistent with interviews with trade experts and are tested against competing theories of direct political lobbying through an analysis of WTO dispute initiation."

An edited transcript of the interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/private-firms-and-wto-dispute-escalation-an-interview-with-ryan-brutger.

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.

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/garret-barnwell.

Abstract

The places we live are inseparably connected to who we are. Our relationship with these spaces we come into being through is somewhat foundational to our knowing and being in the world. They shape who we are, and we, in so many ways, shape them, inscribing them with personal meanings and finding social coordinates in them.

In this talk, Barnwell uses vignettes to describe how this takes place, emphasizing that these bonds are most evidently seen when threatened. Basing his insights on several years of clinical experience and critical psychology theory, he draws attention to how people's psychological relationship to place is threatened through grievous acts of epistemic injustices — violence directed at knowledge and speech. These forms of epistemic injustice include the silencing, misrecognition, threats, and killings of land defenders, as well as systematized land dispossession in the name of capitalist expansion and mining. Decolonial and critical psychologies teach us that the language we come into being, which privileges certain politics, ways of knowing and being in the world in relation to such places, has a bearing on subjectivity — what can be said and what is unsayable, and, thus, unactionable.

He describes how such forms of epistemic violence threaten these psychological bonds and produce psychological trauma. Around the world in these extractive zones, Indigenous and land-based resurgent movements play a critical role in defending against epistemic injustices for the flourishing of life. In conclusion, Barnwell draws attention to how such resurgent groups use different forms of land dialogues and speech as integral parts of community resistance and psychological healing.

About the Speaker

Dr. Garret Barnwell is a clinical psychologist working as a psychotherapist and community psychology practitioner. He is most interested in different forms of accompaniment and resistance to extractivism for the flourishing of all life. Barnwell was an expert on the landmark youth-led #cancelcoal climate case launched against the South African government's plans for new coal-fired power. He is also a member of the American Psychological Association's Climate Change Advisory Group. Barnwell's writing includes several expert reports, special issues, and a book, Terrapsychology: Further Inquiry Into Self, Place and Planet (with Prof Craig Chalquist). He is a research associate at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

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 the University of California, 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 the panel.

The event was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, Department of Linguistics, Department of Ethnic Studies, Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, and Native American Studies.

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/unnaming-kroeber-hall

ABOUT THE BOOK

In January 2021, at a time when many institutions were reevaluating fraught histories, the University of California removed anthropologist and linguist Alfred Kroeber's name from a building on its Berkeley campus. Critics accused Kroeber of racist and dehumanizing practices that harmed Indigenous people; university leaders repudiated his values.

In "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall," Andrew Garrett examines Kroeber's work in the early twentieth century and his legacy today, asking how a vigorous opponent of racism and advocate for Indigenous rights in his own era became a symbol of his university's failed relationships with Native communities. Garrett argues that Kroeber's most important work has been overlooked: his collaborations with Indigenous people throughout California to record their languages and stories.

"The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall" offers new perspectives on the early practice of anthropology and linguistics and on its significance today and in the future. Kroeber's documentation was broader and more collaborative and multifaceted than is usually recognized. As a result, the records Indigenous people created while working with him are relevant throughout California as communities revive languages, names, songs, and stories. Garrett asks readers to consider these legacies, arguing that the University of California chose to reject critical self-examination when it unnamed Kroeber Hall.

Recorded on October 17, 2023, this video features a talk by Vincent Bevins, an award-winning journalist and correspondent, focused on his book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. 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. This event was co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative and Social Science Matrix.

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/vincent-bevins.

About the Book

Vincent Bevins' new book, "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution," tells the story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world – and what comes next. From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. Over four years, the acclaimed journalist Bevins carried out hundreds of interviews around the world. The result is a stirring work of history built around one question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for? From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine's Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, If We Burn renders street movements and their consequences in gripping detail. Bevins draws on his own strange experiences in Brazil, where a progressive-led protest explosion led to an extreme-right government that torched the Amazon. Careful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change has been gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.

About the Speakers

Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist and correspondent. He covered Southeast Asia for the Washington Post, reporting from across the entire region and paying special attention to the legacy of the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. He previously served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, also covering nearby parts of South America, and before that he worked for the Financial Times in London. Among the other publications he has written for are the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and more. Vincent was born and raised in California and spent the last few years living in Brazil.

Daniel Aldana Cohen (moderator) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, where he is Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2. He is also Founding Co-Director of the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank. He is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green Deal (Verso 2019).

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley who focuses on the politics of public health in China. She was formerly an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. She obtained her PhD at the University of Michigan and her master's and bachelor's degrees at Beijing University. 

Matrix Social Science Communications Scholar Jennie Barker spoke with Long about her forthcoming book, Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Infectious Disease Politics in China. In the book, she examines how foreign interventions aimed at tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China in the 1990s and 2000s affected the Chinese public health system, government, and society both in ways that the interventions did and did not intend. 

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/yan-long.

 

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.

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) and the UC Berkeley Department of History, the panel was presented as part of the Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series, which features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars.

About the Book

Whose fault are financial crises, and who is responsible for stopping them, or repairing the damage? Impunity and Capitalism develops a new approach to the history of capitalism and inequality by using the concept of impunity to show how financial crises stopped being crimes and became natural disasters. Trevor Jackson examines the legal regulation of capital markets in a period of unprecedented expansion in the complexity of finance ranging from the bankruptcy of Europe's richest man in 1709, to the world's first stock market crash in 1720, to the first Latin American debt crisis in 1825. He shows how, after each crisis, popular anger and improvised policy responses resulted in efforts to create a more just financial capitalism but succeeded only in changing who could act with impunity, and how. Henceforth financial crises came to seem normal and legitimate, caused by impersonal international markets, with the costs borne by domestic populations and nobody in particular at fault.

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/impunity-and-capitalism.

Recorded on November 28, 2023 as part of the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix "Authors Meet Critics" series, this panel focused on Gramsci at Sea, a book by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor in Geography and Co-Director of Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. Professor Chari was joined in conversation by Leslie Salzinger, Associate Professor and Chair of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley, and Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley. The panel was moderated by James Vernon, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at UC Berkeley.

The panel was co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and the Program in Critical Theory.

About the Book

How might an oceanic Gramsci speak to Black aquafuturism and other forms of oceanic critique? This succinct work reads Antonio Gramsci's writings on the sea, focused in his prison notes on waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Professor Chari argues that the imprisoned militant's method is oceanic in form, and that this oceanic Marxism can attend to the roil of sociocultural dynamics, to waves of imperial power, as well as to the capacity of Black, Drexciyan, and other forms of oceanic critique to "storm" us on different shores.

A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/gramsci-at-sea/

The innovation, use and experience, and exchange of new and emerging technologies today are influenced by the role that China plays in global politics and economy.

Recorded on April 18, 2025, this Matrix on Point panel brought together experts of the Chinese political economy and law and society in a conversation to discuss the political, economic, security, and social dimensions and complexities of technology in China's internationalization during times of global tensions. Topics covered included the institutional foundations of China's technological development, technology governance and industrial policy, global technology competition, and legal technology and societal impacts in today's China.

The panel featured Mark Dallas, Professor of Political Science and Science, Technology, and Society at Union College; Roselyn Hsueh, Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Visiting Scholar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative; and Rachel E. Stern, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Berkeley. AnnaLee Saxenian, Professor in the School of Information, served as chair and moderator.

Matrix On Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation.

The panel was co-presented by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, and co-sponsored by the Institute of International Studies (IIS), the UC Berkeley School of Information, and the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science. This public panel is a part of the two-day Bringing the Sector Back In conference, also co-sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

A video recording of this panel is available on YouTube.

A transcript of this recording can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/tech-and-china

Recorded on November 14, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel is focused on Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, by Dylan Penningroth, Professor of Law and Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at UC Berkeley, and Associate Dean, Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy / Legal Studies at Berkeley Law.

Professor Penningroth was joined in conversation by Ula Yvette Taylor, Professor and 1960 Chair of Undergraduate Education in the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies; and Eric Schickler, Professor, Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Endowed Chair in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley. The panel was moderated by Waldo E. Martin Jr., the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History and Citizenship at UC Berkeley.

The Social Science Matrix "Authors Meet Critics" book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) graduate program, Berkeley School of Law, the Center for the Study of Law and Society (CSLS), the Center for Race and Gender (CRG), and the UC Berkeley Department of History.

About the Book

The familiar story of civil rights goes something like this: Once, the American legal system was dominated by racist officials who shut Black people out and refused to recognize their basic human dignity. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law—and soon, everyday African Americans joined with them to launch the Civil Rights Movement. In Before the Movement, historian Dylan C. Penningroth overturns this story, demonstrating that Black people had long exercised "the rights of everyday use," and that this lesser-known private-law tradition paved the way for the modern vision of civil rights. Well-versed in the law, Black people had used it to their advantage for nearly a century to shape how they worked, worshiped, learned, and loved. Based on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses, Before the Movement recovers a vision of Black life allied with, yet distinct from, "the freedom struggle."

A transcript of this conversation can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/penningroth/.

While the last 20 years have marked a significant change in increased acceptance of varied gender expressions and sexual orientations, these changes haven't made the importance of gender and sexuality as concepts disappear. If anything, they've become more relevant for understanding the world today.

Recorded on November 30, 2023, this panel brought together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of sociology, ethnic studies, and political science for a discussion of gender and sexuality through the lens of such topics as medicine, transnational migration, and marriage. The panel featured David Pham, a PhD candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies; Emily Ruppel, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology; and Soosun You, a PhD candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley. The panel was moderated by Laura C. Nelson, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley.

The panel was co-sponsored by the Center for Race & Gender (CRG) and the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. This event was part of the Matrix on Point series, a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation.

Watch the panel on YouTube.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/new-directions/.

 

How did South Africans and Soviets think about how to manage difference--in their home contexts and in decades of conversation with one another? In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Hilary Lynd, a PhD candidate in history, discusses the changing relationship between South Africa and the USSR from the 1960s through the 1980s. In this interview, Julia Sizek, Matrix Postdoctoral Scholar, and Lynd discuss how anti-apartheid activists were initially inspired by a Soviet model for a multinational society before a surprising about-face toward the end of the apartheid and the USSR. 

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://live-ssmatrix.pantheon.berkeley.edu/research-article/hilary-lynd.

 

 

During the peak of the most recent tech upswing, downtown San Francisco was booming. Now, after the pandemic and a new round of tech layoffs, commentators fear that the so-called "doom loop" has come to valuable commercial real estate. While boom and bust cycles are not new to The City, what can we learn from the struggles of commercial real estate?

Recorded on October 31, 2023 at UC Berkley's Social Science Matrix, this panel featured a discussion of the current state of commercial real estate in San Francisco — and what lies ahead. Panelists include Ted Egan, Chief Economist of the City and County of San Francisco; Nicholas Bloom, the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University; and Nancy Wallace, the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate Capital Markets at Berkeley Haas. Amir Kermani, Associate Professor of Finance and Real Estate at the Haas School of Business and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, moderated.

This panel was co-sponsored by Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS), Haas School of Business, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI), and the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics.

A transcript is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/boom-to-doom/