New Directions: Borderlands

October 1st, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Part of the New Directions event series

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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. This panel brings 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 will feature 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, will moderate.

The Social Science Matrix New Directions event series features research presentations by graduate students from different social science disciplines. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology.

Panelists

Carlotta Wright de la Cal is a PhD Candidate in History at UC Berkeley. Her research examines how Indigenous and migrant railroad workers in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands navigated and resisted overlapping systems of legal and corporate control from the 1880s to the 1940s. Drawing on archives in Mexico City, Washington D.C., and various state and private collections, the project reveals how state and corporate actors deployed immigration law, federal Indian policy, and labor systems to discipline mobile racialized populations, while workers strategically exploited jurisdictional gray zones to advance autonomy and resistance.

Adriana P. Ramirez is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her research interests revolve around migration, citizenship, Latin America, political sociology, and race and ethnicity. The influence of growing up as a migrant student between Mexico and the U.S. is evident in her work, which explores transnational migration dynamics. Her current work examines how young return migrants adapt to different spheres of Mexican society and formulate their identity and sense of belonging across contexts of reception in the states of Oaxaca and Jalisco. Her previous work studied how young return migrants navigate their double Mexican-U.S. citizenship to negotiate a sense of belonging and better opportunities in Mexico, recently published in Social Problems.

Irene Franco Rubio is a first-generation Latina scholar, writer, and community organizer from Phoenix, Arizona. She is a PhD student in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley with Designated Emphases in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and New Media. Her research focuses on multiracial coalition-building and cross-cultural solidarity within abolitionist movements, especially in the U.S. Southwest, drawing from her lived experience and grassroots organizing. Irene is also a Soros Justice Fellow and the host of the #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, where she examines the intersections of immigration, incarceration, and racialized state violence. At Berkeley, she connects academic research with grassroots organizing through community-based projects that center system-impacted communities and the pursuit of collective liberation.

Hidetaka Hirota (moderator) is a social and legal historian of U.S. immigration, specializing in nativism, immigration control, and policy from the antebellum era to the Progressive Era. His first book, Expelling the Poor (Oxford, 2017), examines 19th-century deportation policies and received multiple awards. He is currently working on The American Dilemma, which explores the tension between nativism and labor demand in shaping U.S. immigration policy, as well as projects on Japanese immigrants and the history of anti-immigrant sentiment. His research has appeared in leading history and migration studies journals. At UC Berkeley, he teaches U.S. immigration history and co-directs the Canadian Studies Program. He was also a 2024-2025 Matrix Faculty Fellow.

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Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature by Alyssa Battistoni

August 27th, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm

Berkeley Workshop in Environmental History Fall Seminar and Public Lecture

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In this lecture, political theorist Alyssa Battistoni draws from her newly released book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature, which posits a new theory for understanding contemporary ecological breakdown and the core dynamics of capital accumulation behind it.

Alyssa Battistoni is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College with research interests in environmental and climate politics, feminism, Marxist thought, political economy, and the history of political thought. She is the co-author, with Kate Aronoff, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso 2019), and her work has appeared in Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, and Nature Sustainability.

Presented as the Berkeley Workshop in Environmental History Fall Seminar and Public Lecture, this event is co-sponsored by the Department of History, BESI Climate, Social Science Matrix, the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, and Critical Theory. The event organizers are part of the “Commons and Property in the Climate Crisis” Matrix Research Team.

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Matrix on Point: Spaces for Thriving

November 3rd, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm

Part of the Matrix on Point Event Series

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Physical spaces profoundly influence community well-being. Understanding this relationship is crucial for leveraging planning and policy to foster equitable outcomes. This panel brings together experts to explore how thoughtful planning and strategic policy can shift power toward communities, creating conditions where all can thrive. This discussion will bridge diverse perspectives on environmental conservation, design psychology, and disability studies to illuminate steps toward more just and inclusive environments.

The panel will feature 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, will moderate.

Co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces, the Possibility Lab, and the UC Berkeley Departments of Geography and Anthropology.

Panelists

Sally Augustin is a practicing environmental/design psychologist, the principal at Design With Science, and a researcher with the UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces. She has extensive experience integrating science-based insights to develop recommendations for the design of places, objects, and services that support desired cognitive, emotional, and physical experiences. Her Design With Science clients include manufacturers, service providers, and design firms in North America, Europe, and Asia. Augustin is a graduate of Wellesley College (BA), Northwestern University (MBA), and Claremont Graduate University (PhD). Dr. Augustin is the author of Designology (Mango 2019), Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009), and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Information Design (Wiley, 2012).

You-Tien Hsing is a Professor of Geography and the Pamela P. Fong Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies. Her research and teaching focus on the political economy of development in East Asia, especially China. She is interested in the question of power and space. Her first book, Making Capitalism in China: The Taiwan Connection, centers on the role of culture in inter-regional capital flows. In her second book, The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China, she examines the issue of territoriality, looking at how the transformation of the state and society shapes and is shaped by land battles in Chinese cities and villages. Her co-edited book, Reclaiming Chinese Society, explores China’s emerging social activism in struggles over distribution, recognition, and representation. Her current project concerns the cultural and environmental politics in Northwestern China. For her research, she draws inspiration from ethnographic work, including in-depth interviews and participatory observation with a reflexive perspective. She believes that theorizing starts from muddy realities and is a process of open dialogues and self-reflections, of which the historical and the geographical, the institutional and the emotional are all indispensable parts.

Karen Nakamura is a Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley and is the director of the Disability Studies Lab. Professor Nakamura’s research focuses on disability, sexuality, and other minority social movements in contemporary Japan, In 2006, she published Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity, an ethnography exploring sign language and deaf social movements. Her second project on psychiatric disabilities and community-based recovery resulted in two ethnographic films and a book titled, A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan (2014). Her books, films, and articles have resulted in numerous prizes including the John Whitney Hall Book Prize, the SVA Short Film Award, and David Plath Media Award. She is currently finishing a project on trans movements as disability in Japan while launching a new project on robotics, augmentation, and prosthetic technology.

Meredith Sadin (moderator) is an Assistant Research Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She is a trained political scientist (Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2014) and her work focuses on political access, community engagement, and inequality. Dr. Sadin has extensive experience collaborating with practitioners, policymakers, and government agencies on projects designed to evaluate, implement, scale, and improve public policies and programs as well as access to the democratic process. She aims to utilize Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approaches in her research – conducting rigorous and systematic research with the collaboration of those directly impacted by the issue being studied. She currently serves as the Director of the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement (CCDE) as well as a Faculty Research Affiliate at the Possibility Lab. Her work has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the CARESTAR Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Sadin has published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Psychology, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Punishment & Society, Journal of Urban Design, and cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New Republic.

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California Spotlight: Tech Authoritarianism

September 22nd, 2025
12:00pm-1:30pm

Part of the California Spotlight series

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As a hub of technological innovation, California is increasingly grappling with complex questions surrounding the influence of technology on society and governance. The rise of powerful tech entities and the rapid advancement of digital technologies are giving way to new forms of control, raising concerns about tech authoritarianism and its impact on democratic processes and communities.

Presented as part of the Social Science Matrix California Spotlight series, this panel will bring together experts to delve into the manifestations of tech authoritarianism, with a particular focus on its emergence and implications within California. Our panelists will explore how certain technological advancements and their proponents are reshaping societal structures, potentially undermining democratic frameworks, and extending their influence across various sectors. The discussion will connect these local dynamics to broader, global trends.

The panel will feature Elijah Baucom, Lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Information and Director of the Cybersecurity Clinic; Finn Brunton, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at UC Davis; and Lee Crandall, PhD Candidate in Geography at UC Berkeley. James Holston, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley and Director of the Social Apps Lab, will moderate.

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Departments of Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, and Sociology.

Panelists

Elijah Baucom is a digital security and privacy activist positioned at the intersection of tech and humanity. As the Director of the UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic (a public interest cybersecurity clinic), Elijah trains students and partners with them to support social sector organizations that are often more susceptible to ideologically based attacks. Elijah is the founder of Everyday Security, a company that provides enterprise-level Cyber, IT, and Business consulting and solutions to Everyday People and organizations that support them. This often includes social justice organizations, non-profits, co-ops, activists, and individuals. He holds dual Master’s degrees in Business Administration and Telecommunication Systems Management from Murray State University.

Finn Brunton is a professor at UC Davis with appointments in Science and Technology Studies and Cinema and Digital Media. He is the author of *Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet* (MIT, 2013) and *Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Technologists, and Utopians Who Created Cryptocurrency* (Princeton, 2019), and the co-author of *Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest* (with Helen Nissenbaum, MIT, 2015) and *Communication* (with Mercedes Bunz and Paula Bialski, meson press and University of Minnesota, 2019). His articles and papers have been published in venues including *Radical Philosophy,* *Artforum,* *The Guardian,* and *Representations.*

Lee Crandall is currently a PhD student in Geography at UC Berkeley researching new tech cities, technoeconomic development, and the reconfiguration of nature, land, and (multispecies) lives under crypto/tech imaginaries and politics. Prior to starting the doctoral program at Berkeley, Lee was a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture in Troy, NY. Lee is also a licensed architect in New York, where they managed several large-scale projects in public transportation and infrastructure in New York City and Puerto Rico. Their work has recently been published in Progress in Economic Geography, Political Geography, Big Data and Society, and Design and Culture.

James Holston (moderator) is a political anthropologist. His work focuses on the city as a strategic site for the emergence and erosion of citizenship, popular sovereignty, and democracy. He has conducted research projects in Brazil, Denmark, Nicaragua, and the United States. His current work investigates new forms of direct democracy and develops application software for democratic assembly. His books, research articles, and software development engage these issues as an anthropology of critique and experiment. He is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and also founding director of the Social Apps Lab. He has written and edited a number of books, including The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília, Cities and Citizenship, and Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil.

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Matrix on Point: Conspiracy Theories

October 27th, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Part of the Matrix on Point Event Series

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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. This panel will bring together experts to delve into the multifaceted world of conspiracy theories. Drawing on diverse academic perspectives, the discussion will explore the nature of conspiracy theories, their societal implications, and how they are understood and addressed.

The panel will feature 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, will moderate.

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.

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Scandinavian, African American Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory.

Panelists

Michael M Cohen was born in Denver, Colorado, the child of two public school teachers. He holds a BA in History from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University (2004). He is currently an Associate Teaching Professor at UC Berkeley with a joint appointment in American Studies and African American Studies. He is the author of The Conspiracy of Capital: Law, Violence and American Popular Radicalism in the Age of Monopoly (2019). His general research and teaching areas cover the cultural and political history of the United States from the Civil War to the present. Areas of emphasis include racial capitalism and racial formations in the United States; labor, work and radical social movements; Marx and the Marxist tradition in world history and theory; cultural studies, popular culture, and US film and literature; theories of conspiracy and conspiracy theories; political cartooning and comic books; race and drugs in US history; and contemporary US politics and social change.

Tim Tangherlini is the Elizabeth H. and Eugene A. Shurtleff Chair in Undergraduate Education at UC Berkeley. He is a Professor in the Dept. of Scandinavian and in the School of Information. A folklorist and ethnographer by training, he is the author of Danish Folktales, Legends and Other Stories (2014), Talking Trauma (1999), and Interpreting Legend (1994). He has also published widely in academic journals. He is interested in the circulation of stories on and across social networks, and the ways in which stories are used by individuals in their ongoing negotiation of ideology with the groups to which they belong. In general, his work focuses on computational approaches to problems in the study of folklore, literature, and culture. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society and the Royal Gustav Adolf Academy (one of Sweden’s Royal Academies). A producer of three independent documentary films, he has also consulted on films for Disney Animation, National Geographic Television, National Geographic Specials, and PBS.

Lakshmi Sarah is an educator and journalist with a focus on experimental storytelling. She has produced content for newspapers, radio and magazines from Ahmedabad, India to Los Angeles, California including AJ+, Die Zeit Online and The New York Times. She is currently a digital producer for KQED News and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography. She has developed curriculum training journalists in video and immersive storytelling skills in the U.S., India, and around the world. Previously, as a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Berkeley’s Advanced Media Institute, she taught multimedia and VR workshops. Her teaching and reporting have brought her to Hamburg, Germany as a Fulbright Fellow; to Berlin as an Arthur F. Burns Fellow with Die Zeit Online; and to India to report on ethnic violence in the Northeastern state of Manipur as a Pulitzer Center grant recipient.

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Politics and Governance in the Digital Age: Between Populism and Technocracy

May 2nd, 2025
2:00pm-3:15pm

This talk will feature Rogers Brubaker, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UCLA, who will discuss a chapter of his recent book, Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents. The talk will focus on the chapter “Politics,” addressing the epistemic, emotional, and organizational questions that digital hyperconnectivity imposes on governance, and the resulting tensions between democracy, populism, and technocracy.

The talk is sponsored by the Social Effects and Normativity of Data-Mining, Algorithms, and the Digital Economy Research Team, a Social Science Matrix Research Team.

This event will be held in person.

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About the Speaker

Rogers Brubaker is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he holds the UCLA Foundation Chair. Brubaker has written widely on social theory, immigration, citizenship, nationalism, ethnicity, race, gender, populism, and – most recently – digital hyperconnectivity. His first book explored the idea of rationality in the work of Max Weber, while his essays on Pierre Bourdieu helped introduce Bourdieu to an English-speaking audience. His next two books analyzed European nationalism in historical and comparative perspective. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (1992) sought to explain the sharply differing ways in which citizenship has been defined vis-à-vis immigrants in France and Germany and helped establish what has since become a flourishing field of citizenship studies; Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (1996) compared contemporary East European nationalisms with those of the interwar period, both emerging after the breakup of multinational states into would-be nation-states. Subsequently, in a series of analytical essays, many of them collected in Ethnicity without Groups (2004), Brubaker critically engaged prevailing analytical stances in the study of ethnicity, race, and nationalism and sought to develop alternative analytical resources. These informed his collaborative book Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (2006), which examined the everyday workings of ethnicity in a setting of highly charged ethnonational conflict.

Brubaker’s more recent work has taken him in new directions. Grounds for Difference (Harvard, 2015) emerged from three new lines of work, engaging three increasingly salient contexts for the contemporary politics of difference: the return of inequality, the return of biology, and the return of the sacred. The introduction can be read here.

Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities (Princeton, 2016) was prompted by the pairing of “transgender” and “transracial” in debates about whether Caitlyn Jenner could legitimately identify as a woman and Rachel Dolezal as black. The introduction can be read here. More recent work on gender includes “Exit, Voice, and Gender” (2023) and “Emerging Pronoun Practices After the Procedural Turn: Disclosure, Discovery, and Repair” (2024).

Brubaker’s work on the pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist moment includes “Why Populism?” (2017), “Between Nationalism and Civilizationism” (2017), “Populism and Nationalism” (2020), and “Paradoxes of Populism during the Pandemic” (2020).

Brubaker’s most recent book, Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents, was published by Polity in November 2022. Treating digital hyperconnectivity as a “total social fact,” the book addresses transformations of the self, social interaction, culture, economics, and politics.

Brubaker has taught at UCLA since 1991. Before coming to UCLA, he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows of Harvard University (1988-1991). He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (1994-99), a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (1994-99), and Fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1995-96), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1999-2000), and the Wissenschaftskolleg of Berlin (2016-2017). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.

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The New Tariff Regime: How the Trump Administration Is Upending the Global Trade Order

April 23rd, 2025
4:30pm-6:00pm

a banner showing the details about the event with photos of the panelists

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Please join us for a fireside chat with professors Matilde Bombardini, Andrés Rodriguez-Clare, and Barry Eichengreen to learn more about rapidly evolving U.S. tariff policy and how it might impact trade, the economy, and international finance and policy. The discussion will include time for audience questions.

Panelists

- Matilde Bombardini is a professor and the Oliver E. and Dolores Williamson Chair in the Economics of Organization at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. She is also the co-faculty director of the Clausen Center for International Business and Policy. Her research focuses on international trade and interest group politics.
- Andres Rodriguez-Clare is the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Professor of Economics and department chair of the UC Berkeley Economics Department. His research focuses on gains from trade; economic growth; multinational production and technology diffusion; and industrial policy.
- Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee & Helen N. Pardee Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science in the UC Berkeley Department of Economics. His research focuses on international economic and finance issues, including exchange rates and capital flows; the European economy; Asian integration and development with a focus on exchange rates and financial markets; and the impact of China on the international economic and financial system.

Co-sponsored by the Haas School of Business, the Clausen Center for International Business & Policy, and UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix.

This event is free and will be presented in-person and online via Zoom. Please register to attend. We will send a link to the Zoom presentation in advance of the event.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Chuck Kapelke at ckapelke@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

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Global Perspectives on Anti-Blackness and Gender Violence

April 9th, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PDT

Part of the Matrix on Point Event Series

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This panel brings together interdisciplinary experts to discuss how anti-Blackness extends beyond history and carries continued implications for ongoing technologies of anti-Black gender violence. Panelists will take an interdisciplinary approach to grappling with how assumptions of Blackness bracket the divide between the violence of (un)gendering and resistance.

The panel will feature Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley and a 2024-2025 Matrix Faculty Fellow; Matheuzza Xavier, artist and researcher, and PhD candidate in Performing Arts at UFBA; and Márcia Ribeiro, Brazilian lawyer, specialist in Criminal Procedure Law, Master’s in Law from UFMG, and currently a PhD candidate at the same institution.

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, Department of Ethnic Studies, Department of Geography, Department of History of Art, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Institute for Gender and Sexuality Research (IGSR).

Panelists

Patrice Douglass is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. She holds a PhD and MA in Culture and Theory from the University of California, Irvine, a MA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and a BA in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also currently a Matrix Faculty Fellow.

Márcia Ribeiro is a Brazilian lawyer, specialist in Criminal Procedure Law, Master in Law from UFMG, and currently a PhD candidate at the same institution. She is a researcher at Diverso UFMG – Legal Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and a Legal Analyst at Mapa do Acolhimento, a Brazilian organization that provides legal and psychological support to women survivors of gender-based violence across Brazil. She is currently conducting a doctoral research internship at the University of California, Berkeley. Her expertise lies in integrating legal knowledge and experience in assisting women survivors of gender-based violence to create technical and compassionate interventions that generate impact.

Matheuzza Xavier is a Travesti (Trans femme), an artist residing between Brazil and the United States since 2022, pursuing a multifaceted career in the film industry. Matheuzza is an actor, playwright, writer, screenwriter, director, art curator, organizer and researcher on issues of race, gender and sexuality. Their work primarily focuses on investigating the intersection of antiblackness and transgerderness within the domains of performance, performing arts, media, social and gender studies. Matheuzza is a PhD Candidate and holds an MA in the Performing Arts Program at The Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). Currently she is a Visiting Scholar in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at UC Berkeley, and holds a BA in Theater and Performing Arts from the same institution in Bahia, Brazil. In 2023, Matheuzza’s television show project, OCEANS, was recognized and awarded by PrimeVideo Amazon Studios during the Black Stories Screenwriting Lab. Matheuzza’s feature film project, Overbrook, has received numerous awards and is currently in the development phase. Furthermore, Matheuzza has engaged in various theatrical performances, art exhibitions, and performances since 2016 in Brazil.

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150 Years of Border Control: The Legacy of the 1875 Page Act

April 23rd, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Part of the Matrix on Point Event Series

a scene from the 1800s showing chinese immigrants

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This event marks the 150th anniversary of the Page Act of 1875, one of the first federal laws to restrict immigration to the United States — especially Asian immigration, as the law prohibited the importation of Asian contract workers, prostitutes (a provision targeted against Chinese women), and criminals.

The event will use the anniversary as an opportunity to discuss issues of race, gender, and labor in US immigration and Asian American history. The interdisciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors will discuss their past or current work related to race, gender, or labor in US immigration history or Asian American Studies, and their thoughts on the legacies of the Page Act and related issues for the United States today.

Panelists include Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley; Leti Volpp, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley; and Matrix Faculty Fellow Hidetaka Hirota, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley and Thomas Garden Barnes Chair in Canadian Studies.

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Department of History, Department of Ethnic Studies, the Asian American Research Center, and the Center for Race and Gender.

Panelists

Catherine Ceniza Choy is Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and an award-winning historian of Asian American history. She is the author of Asian American Histories of the United States (2022), which examines nearly 200 years of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the U.S. Her previous books include Empire of Care (2003) on Filipino nurses in U.S. history and Global Families (2013) on Asian international adoption. Choy has been widely cited in media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Atlantic. She previously served as chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and associate dean in multiple university divisions.

Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, received a BA in history and economics from UC San Diego in 1997 and a PhD in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007. Her main research interests include the welfare state, immigration, race and ethnic relations, American political development, as well as historical and political sociology. Her most recent book, Three Worlds of Relief (Princeton University Press, 2012), compares the incorporation of blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants in the American welfare system from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Fox won six book awards for Three Worlds of Relief, including the 2012 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her next book project focuses on the rise of legal status restrictions in American social welfare policy since the New Deal. Her work has appeared in the American Behavioral Scientist, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of American History, Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Social Science History, Political Science Quarterly, Sociological Methods and Research, Law & Social Inquiry, and Studies in American Political Development. She is also co-author of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (Basic Books, 2004).

Leti Volpp is Professor of Law at UC Berkeley and a scholar of immigration law and citizenship theory, examining how law is shaped by culture and identity. She has published extensively on issues of immigration, gender, and race, with work appearing in Constitutional Commentary, Columbia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. She is the editor of Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places and Legal Borderlands. Volpp has received numerous honors, including fellowships from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations, and is a member of the American Law Institute. She directs the Center for Race and Gender and is affiliated with multiple interdisciplinary programs at Berkeley.

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Governing Giants: Law, Politics, and Antitrust

April 25th, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Part of the Matrix on Point Event Series

Antitrust as a complex subject, related to important topics. Pictured as a puzzle and a word cloud made of most important ideas and phrases related to antitrust. ,3d illustration

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Large corporations increasingly dominate markets, the flow of information, and political influence. In response, many governments have used antitrust policies in an attempt to rein in companies. Examples include investigations and cases brought by the United States and the European Union against Google, in addition to major investigations against Microsoft, Facebook, and others.

This panel brings together scholars of political science, economics, and law to discuss the changing landscape of antitrust policy in an era of multinational corporations. Ryan Brutger (UC Berkeley, Political Science) will moderate the panel. Panelists include Amy Pond (Washington University St. Louis, Political Science), Prasad Krishnamurthy (UC Berkeley, Law), and Michael Allen (Stanford, Political Science). The panelists will speak about new challenges in competition policy, the domestic and international dimensions of antitrust policy, and the economic, political, and social considerations that shape antitrust policy and enforcement.

Panelists

Amy Pond is an Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining WashU, she taught at the Technical University of Munich and at Texas A&M University. Professor Pond conducts research in international and comparative political economy. Her current research looks at how market concentration and international ownership affect domestic policies, including the provision of public goods like property rights and democratic representation. She has also worked on trade and financial liberalization and the broader logic of institutional change.

Michael Allen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His research interests span international political economy, international institutions, and law, with a focus on the politics of global capitalism. He studies how the growth of private authority influences domestic legal development and the power of countries to regulate foreign commerce. He also has ongoing research projects in related areas including special economic zones, transnational anti-corruption efforts and global competition law. Prior to joining Stanford, he earned a PhD in Government from Cornell University and held postdoctoral positions at Yale University and Harvard University.

Prasad Krishnamurthy joined the Berkeley Law Faculty in 2010. He holds a J.D. from the Yale Law School, a Ph.D. in economics from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago. Prasad’s research and teaching interests include financial regulation, antitrust and competition policy, consumer law and policy, and distributive justice.

Ryan Brutger is an Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. in the department of Politics at Princeton University, where he received a Harold W. Dodds Fellowship. Prior to joining Berkeley, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Brutger specializes in experimental methodology, public opinion, and international relations. His research crosses political economy, international law, and international security, examining the domestic politics and political psychology of politics and economics. He also researches experimental methodology, with a focus on experimental design and survey experiments. He is also a 2024-2025 Matrix Faculty Fellow.

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CANCELED: Theorizing The “Non-Conventional Revolution”: Fracking, Tar Sands, and the Unwanted Energy Transition

February 28th, 2025
3:00pm-5:00pm

This event has been canceled by the organizers due to the University of California healthcare, research, and technical employees’ three-day strike, which will begin on February 26. We will let you know if this workshop is rescheduled at a future date.

Over the last two decades, the rise of “nonconventional” fossil-fuel extraction has wildly transformed local landscapes within the North American hinterland, the Earth’s climatic system, and the political-economic balance between northern and southern nations. This workshop is devoted to the critical discussion of two works in progress that aim to theorize the ongoing revolution in non-conventional fossil fuels.

Conventional fossil fuel production has large plateaued since the mid-2000s, yet the development of new methods of extraction — especially SAGD in Canada’s Athabasca deposit and hydraulic fracturing in West Texas’ Permian Basin — delineate the contours of a novel, unstable, and highly destructive energy system. Previous research on these industries has largely focused on activism, environmental health, and financial networks. Yet in the scholarly literature, it remains unclear at which point a shift from conventional to non-conventional fossil fuels heralds the onset of a new energy regime and why such a change matters.

To discuss these questions, Troy Vettese and Cameron Hu will discuss their respective papers on the tar sands and fracking, with Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton as discussant. They draw, variously, upon fieldwork, historical and anthropological methods, and lineages of Marxist and postcolonial thought.

Papers will be pre-circulated to registered participants by February 21. Effective participation in the workshop depends upon the papers being read closely beforehand.

This event is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Workshop in Environmental History.

About the Speakers

Cameron Hu is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University. He received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation, “Knowing Destroying,” received the 2022 Daniel F. Nugent Prize. His recent articles are published or forthcoming with Social Studies of Science, Cultural Anthropology, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online, as well as several edited volumes and exhibition catalogues.

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and Ciriacy-Wantrup research fellow at UC Berkeley. Previously, Vettese has held fellowships at the University of Copenhagen, Harvard University, and the European University Institute. Together with Drew Pendergrass, Vettese co-authored Half-Earth Socialism (Verso 2022), which has been translated into five languages and turned into an educational video game that has been played by 100,000 people. Vettese’s research interests include Marxist theory, animal studies, the history of economic thought, and energy studies. His popular and scholarly work has appeared in The Guardian, n+1, Jacobin, New Left Review, and Contemporary European History.

Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton (discussant) is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. He researches the political, economic, and environmental aspects of critical mineral supply chains for energy transitions, with a focus on China and Latin America. He also conducts related research with the Climate Policy Lab in The Fletcher School at Tufts University and the Klinger Lab at the University of Delaware.

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Consequential Sentences: Computational Analyses of California Parole Hearing Transcripts

April 1st, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Part of the Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS)

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Please join us on April 1, 2025 for 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. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences (BIDS). This event will be presented in-person and will not be livestreamed.

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.

About the Speaker

AJ Alvero is a computational sociologist at Cornell University with departmental affiliations in Sociology, Information Science, and Computer Science. Most of his research examines moments of high stakes evaluation, specifically college admissions and parole hearings. In doing so, he addresses questions and topics related to the sociological inquiry of artificial intelligence, culture, language, education, race and ethnicity, and organizational decision making. This work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Science Advances, Poetics, The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Machine Learning, Sociological Methods & Research, Journal of Big Data, and other venues. AJ earned his PhD at Stanford University along with an MS in statistics.

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