Past Events

Join us on September 30 for an "Author Meets Critics" panel featuring Carolyn Chen, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, presenting her book, "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley." Professor Chen will be joined in conversation by Arlie Hochschild, Professor Emerita in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, and Morgan Ames, Assistant Professor of Practice in the School of Information and Associate Director of Research for the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society. Marion Fourcade will moderate.

In recent years, we have seen presumably new forms of racial bias and discrimination in mainstream politics that challenge existing theories and offer new scholarly directions. This panel, presented by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research, will discuss new perspectives on inter- and intra-racial attitudes, new directions for research, and new ways of theorizing, measuring, and experimenting to understand the politics of race and ethnicity. 

Register for an online Matrix on Point panel discussion on how technology is changing humanitarian interventions, the human rights of recipients, and the broader power relations between donors and recipients. With Daragh Murray, University of Essex Human Rights Centre & School of Law; Fleur Johns, UNSW Sydney; and Wendy H. Wong, Principal’s Research Chair, Professor, Political Science, The University of British Columbia.

Less than a month before Brazil's most important elections since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Berkeley Geography and Social Science Matrix are hosting the filmmaker Madiano Marcheti, whose first feature-length movie, Madalena, shows a Brazil rarely seen on film. Set in the agroindustrial interior of Mato Grosso do Sul, the film offers a profound reflection on the imbrications of political power, race, masculinity, agroindustry, and anti-LGBTQI violence in contemporary Brazilian society.

Join us on Friday, September 9, from 1-2:30pm PDT for an “Authors Meet Critics” discussion focused on "The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security," by Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff. The authors will be joined in conversation by Michael Watts and Cathryn Carson, and Aihwa Ong will moderate.

Join us on September 1st for a talk with Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, focused on his recent book, "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century." DeLong will be joined in conversation by Robert Brenner, Director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA. Moderated by Steven Vogel, Professor of Political Economy and Co-Director of the Network for a New Political Economy (N2PE). This event is co-sponsored with N2PE.

This course covers the mechanics underlying machine learning methods and discusses how these techniques can be leveraged by social scientists to gain new insight from their data. Specifically, the course will cover: decision trees, random forests, boosting, k-means clustering and nearest neighbors, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks, and ensemble learning. We will also discuss best practices concerning tuning, error estimation, and model interpretability.

Floods are the most destructive natural hazard, both at the national and international scale, and they disproportionately affect people of color and the poor. To understand this uneven exposure to floods requires that we understand the history of land use and institutional structures that have resulted in current exposure and inequitable allocation of resources for flood protection and for post-disaster aid (‘procedural vulnerability’). In this presentation, panelists Danielle Zoe Rivera (UC Berkeley) and Jessica Ludy (US Army Corps) will draw upon their research on these topics and discuss pathways to improving on the current situation. 

As we approach the grim milestone of one million deaths in the United States, taking stock of the personal and collective consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic becomes an urgent task for social scientists worldwide. This Matrix on Point panel will examine the physical, material and psychological toll of the past two years of rampant disease, on and off social distancing and shifting economic ground. It will analyze the unequal distribution of the pandemic's burden across the population, discuss the long-term scarring that may ensue, and contemplate the (possibly more uplifting) lessons to be drawn for the future.

Join us on May 5 for a "Matrix on Point" panel on organizing, power, and collective action, featuring Arisha Hatch, Vice President and Chief of Campaigns at Color Of Change; Professors Liz McKenna and Hahrie Han, from Johns Hopkins University; Professor Michelle Oyakawa, from Muskingum University; Professor Margaret Levi, Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University; and Professor Marshall Ganz, the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Register to attend this in-person lecture by John Sides, William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, focused on his new co-authored book, "The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy."

We are delighted to announce that the UC Berkeley Social Sciences Fest and Matrix Open House will be held in-person again this year! The Social Sciences Fest is an occasion to celebrate the UC Berkeley Division of Social Sciences, welcome new faculty members, and honor this year’s distinguished teaching and service award recipients. Please come, celebrate each other, learn about what’s new at Social Science Matrix, and participate in the amazing community that is Berkeley Social Science!