Features

Whether you’re looking to read, listen, or watch content we’ve produced, we’ve got it all here.

All Features

Culture

Interview

Do Food Labels Work? A Visual Interview with Nano Barahona

For this “visual interview,” we spoke with Nano Barahona, Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, who recently examined how a food labeling policy has changed the approaches of both consumers and food producers in Chile.

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Alumni

Interview

Understanding the Opioid Overdose Crisis: An Interview with David Showalter

How does the opioid overdose crisis reshape rural communities? Through their research on opioid use and opioid-related services in backcountry California, David Showalter argues that an ethnographic sensibility can help us understand how drug use both becomes an ordinary part of people’s lives and what policymakers might do to help prevent overdoses. David Showalter completed […]

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Matrix News

Faculty Fellows

2023-2024 Social Science Matrix Faculty Fellows Chosen

Four UC Berkeley professors have been selected to be Matrix Faculty Fellows for the 2023-2024 academic year: Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History; Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Anthropology; Christopher Muller, Associate Professor of Sociology; and Aarti Sethi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. 

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Podcast

Interview

The Scandal of Access: An Interview with Zahra Hayat

Listen to an episode of the Matrix Podcast featuring Zahra Hayat, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, who obtained her PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Hayat about her research on pharmaceutical access in the global South, particularly in Pakistan, and the regimes of price and property on which such access is contingent.

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Affiliated Centers

News

Economy and Society Initiative to Launch at UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley is launching a new research center dedicated to political economy, a cross-disciplinary field focused on the interplay of markets and government. Funded through a generous seed grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) will be housed within the UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science, and will be supported by Social Science Matrix.

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Alumni Interview

Podcast

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, who graduated with a PhD from the Department of Economics in 1997. Professor Danny Yagan conducted the interview.

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Matrix News

Matrix Communications Scholars

Inaugural Cohort of Matrix Communications Scholars Announced

Social Science Matrix is proud to announce our inaugural cohort of Matrix Communications Scholars, a group of six PhD students or candidates who will create podcasts, written interviews, or other features while developing social science communication skills throughout the year. The Scholars are Jennie Barker, a PhD candidate in Political Science; J.T. Jamieson, a PhD candidate in History; Aidan Lee, a PhD student in History; Daniel Lobo, a PhD student in Sociology; Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, a PhD student in Sociology; and Tiffany Taylor, a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology.

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Podcast

Interview

Migration and Reform in Early America: An Interview with J.T. Jamieson

What role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? Listen to (or read) our Matrix Podcast interview with J.T. Jamieson, a PhD Candidate in UC Berkeley’s History Department, who 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 lives and experiences of migrants.

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Podcast

Interview

Reconsidering the Achievement Gap: An Interview with Monica Ellwood-Lowe

For this episode of the Matrix podcast, Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Monica Ellwood-Lowe, a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology, about her research on children’s cognitive performance, and how we might think about removing barriers to children’s success. 

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Article

Podcast

The Rise of Mass Incarceration: An Interview with Chris Muller and Alex Roehrkasse

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley 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 […]

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Article

Interview

The Materiality of the Telegraph Revolution: A Visual Interview with Sophie FitzMaurice

How did the telegraph change the environment? Read our latest "visual interview" with Sophie FitzMaurice, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of History, whose research interests include how telegraph poles were produced, and how woodpeckers responded to the concomitant disappearance of forests and the rise of telegraph lines.

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Podcast

Interview

Economic Benefits of Higher Education: Zach Bleemer and Maximilian Müller

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 the economic impacts of higher education. Maximilian Müller completed his PhD […]

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