Matrix On Point
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Event Date: November 13th, 2025
4:00pm-5:15pm
Financializing Disaster: Insurance and the Climate Crisis
The technical world of insurance is a critical lens through which to understand the escalating crises in climate change and housing. As climate risks intensify, both public and private homeowner insurance markets face unprecedented pressure, revealing the interconnections between housing affordability, wealth inequality, and the broader financialization of our communities. This panel brings together experts from diverse disciplines — including Stephen Collier, Desiree Fields, and Dave Jones — to explore the intersection of insurance, housing, and climate.
Learn More >Matrix Teach-In
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Event Date: November 17th, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:15 PM PT
Promise & Precarity: Exploring Oakland Through Community Engaged Scholarship
Join us on Monday, November 17 at 12pm for a Matrix Teach-In, part of a new event series featuring talks by UC Berkeley lecturers and professors who earn praise from students for their teaching. This event will feature Seth Lunine, Lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, who will present a talk reflecting on his experiences with collaborative scholarship between UC Berkeley undergraduates and community-based organizations in Oakland’s Fruitvale District.
Learn More >CRELS
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Event Date: December 2nd, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm
Maximilian Kasy: “The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits)”
Join us on December 2, 2025 at 4:00pm for a talk by Maximilian Kasy, Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, presenting his book "The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits)." In this book, Kasy shows that artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions—choices made to date by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment. He explains the fundamental principles on which AI works, and, in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn’t between humans and machines, but between those who control the machines and the rest of us.
Learn More >Matrix Lecture
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Event Date: December 4th, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm
Alexis Madrigal: “To Know a Place”
In this Matrix Distinguished Lecture, journalist Alexis Madrigal — host of KQED's Forum and a contributing writer at The Atlantic — turns his attention to the question of how we come to know a place. Drawing on his background as a reporter, writer, and thinker of cities, landscapes, and histories, he will explore different ways of writing about and understanding place, revealing how perspective, memory, and narrative inform the stories we tell about the world around us.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published October 23, 2025
Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence
Watch (or listen to) the recording of our recent Authors Meet Critics panel on "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence," by Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, a book that interrogates the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery. Professor Douglass was joined in conversation by Salar Mameni and Henry Washington, Jr., with Courtney Desiree Morris moderating.
Learn More >CRELS
Recap
Published October 21, 2025
Legitimation by (Mis)identification: Credit, Discrimination, and The Racial Epistemology of Algorithmic Expansion
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.
Learn More >New Directions
Recap
Published October 21, 2025
New Directions: Borderlands
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. Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, Department of Ethnic Studies, and Department of History.
Learn More >Matrix News
Research Teams
Published July 10, 2025
Matrix Welcomes New Research Teams for 2025-2026
Social Science Matrix is proud to welcome eight new Matrix Research Teams — three faculty-led teams and five graduate student-led teams — for the 2025-2026 academic year. Matrix Research Teams are groups of scholars who gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question or emerging field in the social sciences. The teams convene participants […]
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published June 12, 2025
Technology and China in the New Political 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. The panel featured Mark Dallas, Roselyn Hsueh, and Rachel E. Stern; it was moderated and chaired by AnnaLee Saxenian.
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published June 12, 2025
Governing Giants: Law, Politics, and Antitrust
Recorded on April 25, 2025, this panel brought together scholars of political science, economics, and law to discuss the changing landscape of antitrust policy in an era of multinational corporations. Moderated by Ryan Brutger, the panel included Amy Pond (Washington University St. Louis, Political Science), Prasad Krishnamurthy (UC Berkeley, Law), and Michael Allen (Stanford, Political Science).
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