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 …

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 infr…

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 dra…

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 C…

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 wor…

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 h…

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 an…

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 …

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 Southe…

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 thei…

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 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 professo…

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…

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 Calif…

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 Coll…

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 he…

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 Ec…

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 …

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 …

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…

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, Ju…

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 17, 2023, this video features an "Authors Meet Critics" panel on the book Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity, by Massimo Mazzotti, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History and the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science. Professor Mazzotti was joined in conversation by Matthew L. Jones…

The pandemic has rocked higher education. From Zoom classrooms to students leaving higher education, colleges have needed to change modalities to adapt to public health risks and the emergence of new technologies. Enrollment patterns are also shifting in a changing economy: while selective flagship public institutions and not-for-profit private ins…

How does international conflict shape immigration bureaucracy? Sherine Ebadi, a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, researches the impact of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) and employment-based visa programs on Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. military. For Ebadi, visa programs like the SIV are crucial lenses for under…

In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Jennie Barker, a PhD Candidate in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley — and a Matrix Communications Scholar — spoke with Emily Rong Zhang, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley Law School, about her research on voter turnout in the United States. Voter turnout has been a …

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Caroline Tracey, who holds a PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and whose research uses ethnographic, archival, and literary methods to study the American Southwest, Mexico, and the US-Mexico border. Tracey's dissertation, "Binational Politics from Intimate Scales: Motheri…

Recorded on May 2, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this video features a roundtable conversation with Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, focused on The Paradox of Freedom, an interview with Patterson by David Scott, originally published in Small Axe in 2013. The interview has recently been publ…

A transcript of this episode can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/slavery-and-genocide-the-u-s-jamaica-and-the-historical-sociology-of-evil/. Recorded on May 1, 2023, this episode of the Matrix Podcast features a lecture by Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, entitled “Slavery and Gen…

Recorded on February 22, 2023, this podcast features a lecture by Professor Kadji Amin, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. In this talk, “Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty,” Amin discusses a key architect of Modern Sexuality, the German Jewish homosexual sexo…

Recorded on March 22, 2023, this talk — "The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out" — features Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet. Boushey is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable…

Recorded on March 23, 2023, this talk featured Phil Gorski, Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University, discussing his new book (co-authored with Samuel Perry), The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy. The respondent was David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor…

How do the wealthy maintain their wealth through tax havens, and what can we learn about these opaque practices? Recorded on April 3, 2023, this panel featured experts explaining aspects of the global ecosystem of tax avoidance, including how corporations and individuals move across multiple legal jurisdictions to maintain wealth and avoid paying t…

Recorded on March 8, 2023, this video features a lecture by Jo Guldi, Professor of History and Practicing Data Scientist at Southern Methodist University. Professor Guldi’s lecture was entitled “Towards a Practice of Text-Mining to Understand Change Over Historical Time: The Persistence of Memory in British Parliamentary Debates in the Nineteenth C…

Most nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa experienced some form of “land reform” in the 20th century. But what is land reform? In her book, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights, Professor Jo Guldi approaches the problem from the point of view of Britain’s disintegrating empire. She makes the case that land reform moveme…

The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped global geopolitics, trade, and security. How will these changes affect the relationship between the US and China, Europe, and the Global South? How will they impact US firms operating globally, and how might foreign leaders — and notably the Chinese leadership — respond? Recorded on February 16, 202…

Misinformation and conspiracy theories have become a central feature of modern life, but they have a long history that have served to justify surveillance and prosecution of marginalized groups. In this Matrix on Point panel, recorded on March 15, 2023, a group of scholars who study these histories discussed how misinformation circulates, and the e…

Recorded on March 7, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua, by Courtney Desiree Morris, Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Morris was joined in conversatio…

Recorded on March 6, 2023 at UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel focused on Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America, by Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. The recording also features a response by Julio Moreno, Pro…

On February 15, 2023, Social Science Matrix was honored to host Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mariano-florentino-cuellar-reim…

On February 1, 2023, Social Science Matrix presented an Authors Meet Critics panel on Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, a book by Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Riley was joined by two discussants: Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in …

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/alumni-interview-adriana-kugler-world-bank-executive-director-for-the-us/. This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Adriana D. Kugler, the World Bank Group Executive Director for the United States. Dr. Kugler was appointed by President B…

What role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? J.T. Jamieson, a Phd Candidate in UC Berkeley’s Department of History, examines how social reformers in the first half of the 19th century sought to control migration and insert their own understandings of morality, social benevolence, and humanitarianism into the …

Monica Ellwood-Lowe is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology whose research focuses on differences between outcomes for students of different socioeconomic status, as well as the societal barriers that might hinder student success. Ellwood-Lowe tries to answer such questions as, what skills do children develop when they come f…

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two scholars whose work focuses on explaining how mass incarceration has changed over the last 30 years. Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. He studies the production of racial class and gender inequality in the United States throu…

Why do people choose to go to college (or not)? What impact do race-based or financial aid policies have on higher education and the broader economy? In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley-trained economists whose research focuses on higher education and its impact on the broader economy. Maximilian Müller com…

In countries around the world, the "Green Revolution" has changed the scale and economy of growing crops, as pesticides, fertilizers, and new kinds of hybrid seeds have transformed the agricultural production process. In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley scholars who study agrarian life in India, where farme…

How do American child welfare and obstetric healthcare converge? Matty Lichtenstein, a recent PhD from Berkeley’s Sociology Department, studies how state and professional organizations shape social and health inequalities in maternal and child welfare. Her current book project focuses on evolving conceptions of risk in social work and medicine, ill…

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was insulted on the Capitol steps in July 2020, it was a brief media sensation. But what does being called an “effing bitch” mean for how we think about political speech? This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Gabriella Licata, a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, …

This episode features an interview with Victoria Netanus Grubbs, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Black Studies Collaboratory. Grubbs is a black feminist abolitionist educator committed to developing radical leadership in underserved communities in the U.S. and abroad. She completed her PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communic…