Past Events

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!

As part of an ongoing series of events celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley, this online event will showcase three faculty members and their research: Professors Robert Knight, Sheri Johnson, and Jason Okonofua. The cutting-edge research of each of these faculty and their students uniquely illustrates how psychological science can contribute to solving a broad range of big problems at both the individual and societal levels. Register to attend.

Register to attend this online panel discussion, which brings together members of the Matrix Research Team on Digital Transformations in Property and Development to discuss how state, corporations, and grassroots actors are employing digital technologies to remake global land, housing, and property.

In this lecture, Dr. Nina Ansary, an award-winning Iranian American author, historian and UN Women Global Champion for Innovation, will speak about the unknown history of women's activism in Iran, particularly peace activism, challenging the stereotype in the West of Iranian women as powerless and oppressed after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. She will discuss particular cases and overall trends that will make us think differently about both the challenges women have faced in Iran and about the courageous women who distinguished themselves across many fields and expanded the possibilities for women everywhere. UC Berkeley's Dr. Minoo Moallem will respond, and Christine Philliou wil moderate.

Register to join us on April 25 for an online panel discussion with Ilya Budraitskis, Artemy Magun, Ilya Matveev, and Oxana Timofeeva, who are among the foremost philosophers and political theorists from the ranks of the Russian opposition to the war in Ukraine. When the war and the new repression began, they had to flee their country to avoid arrest and persecution. Their distinctive perspectives, not often heard either on the right or the left in the West, will shed a unique light on these urgent topics. The webinar will be moderated by Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, and Alexei Yurchak, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Please join us on Friday, April 22 from 12pm-1:30pm PST for an "Author Meets Critics" panel focused on the book "Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation," by Sarah Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Professor Vaughn will be joined in conversation by Stephen Collier, Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and Sugata Ray, Associate Professor in the Departments of History of Art and South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley.

Racial capitalism has become a widely used term. But how should we define it, and what specific forms does it take? This talk by Catherine Hall — Emerita Professor of History and Chair of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London — will focus on C18 Jamaica and the ways in which two separate sets of practices – racisms and capitalism – intersected to form a system embedded in both the metropolitan and the colonial states.

Presented by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research, this in-person panel will feature Amanda Iovino, Vice President, Polling Director, WPA Intelligence, Youngkin for Governor; Anaís López, Senior Analyst, BSP Research; David Shor, Head of Data Science, Blue Rose Research; and Mike Madrid, Principal, GrassrootsLab.

Is the public university as a growth machine a contradiction or an opportunity as the university aims to fulfill its public mission? The Berkeley Faculty Association brings two leading figures in the public conversation on the public university to unpack its public mission, including its relationship to surrounding cities, the environment, Black and Latinx workers and students, and the conditions of teaching and learning.

Through studying forms of cashless payment, such as mobile money and apps, this panel of scholars — including Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Lana Swartz, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia; and Kevin Donovan, Lecturer in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh — will ask questions about how the social connections made through money are changing, and what the implications might be for our understanding of money, trust, and social connection.