Matrix Research Teams

Matrix Research Teams are groups of scholars who gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question of significance in the social sciences. Successful research teams integrate participants from several social-science disciplines and diverse ranks (i.e. faculty and graduate students); address a compelling research question with real-world significance; and deploy or develop appropriate methodologies in creative ways. Matrix teams may address any social science research question, theoretical or empirical, drawing on any of the social sciences. Matrix is especially interested in original and emerging approaches that explore new theoretical and empirical questions, and that combine research at different scales and from different methodologies.

Research Team

Migration, Racialization, and Gender: Comparing Filipino Migration in France and the United States

The Philippines is a major player in international migration. In 2013, almost 10 percent of the Philippine population lived abroad and approximately half of them were contract workers. Although the Philippines is not unique in supplying labor overseas, its highly institutionalized labor-export process and the occupational diversity of its overseas labor force distinguish it from […]

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Research Team

Climate Economics: From Numerical Models to Data-Driven Estimates

Policy-makers who make decisions related to the economics of climate change have traditionally relied upon numerical integrated assessment models. These model-driven estimates have been around for over two decades and currently are the only source of information used in official U.S. regulatory analysis. Such models are, for example, routinely used by EPA to inform climate […]

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Research Team

Examining the Global Reach of Algorithms

A foundational concept in computer science, algorithms—loosely defined as a set of rules to direct the behavior of machines or humans—have shaped infrastructures, practices, and daily lives. As a result, the need to understand the implications of the development and deployment of algorithms has become ever more pressing, both in academia and public discourse. To […]

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Research Team

Health and Governance Collaborative

In Spring 2015, Social Science Matrix sponsored a prospecting seminar that brought together faculty and graduate students from diverse fields—including biostatistics, business, economics, medicine, and political science—to study governance and global health delivery issues in developing countries. In Fall 2015, Matrix will continue supporting this important initiative, as the Health and Governance Collaborative research seminar […]

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Research Team

Race, Data, and Inequality

The relationship between social science and race has always been complicated. At the turn of the 20th century, social science was used to support the eugenics movement and justify racial inequalities. Yet social-science data was also instrumental in advancing desegregation, for example by supporting the argument in favor of school desegregation in Brown v. Board […]

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Research Team

Climate Change Economics Roundtable

The field of economics plays a crucial role in the debate about appropriate policies intended to mitigate climate change. For example, the tools of economics can be used to measure and/or estimate impacts such as the costs of mitigation, the valuation of damages, the role of abatement in lowering damages, design of policy instruments (e.g. […]

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Research Team

Global Studies at UC Berkeley

A new interdisciplinary major Global Studies is planned as part of a major restructuring of the International and Areas Studies Teaching Programs (IASTP) at UC Berkeley. In Fall 2015, Social Science Matrix is funding a prospecting seminar dedicated to bringing together faculty and graduate students from a wide range of departments and professional schools to […]

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Research Team

Data Science and Climate Change

Quantifying the social and economic impacts of climate change can be a challenging and technical process, but measuring these effects is critical to designing global and national climate policies. This challenge was taken up by a Social Science Matrix seminar during Summer 2015, as researchers and students from diverse disciplines met to determine how modern […]

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Research Team

Human Rights and the University

In Fall 2015, Social Science Matrix is sponsoring a semester-long prospecting seminar on “Human Rights and the University.” The seminar is organized by the Human Rights Program (HRP), a program established in 2010 as an extension of the Human Rights Interdisciplinary (HRI) Minor that promotes interdisciplinarity and undergraduate research and education through a postdoctoral fellowship, […]

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Research Team

Metaphor, Across Data Sets and Methodologies

In Fall 2015, Social Science Matrix will launch a new seminar focused on “metaphor studies,” a field that traces its modern origins to the UC Berkeley campus in 1980, when George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published Metaphors We Live By, thereby launching a wave of interdisciplinary studies on metaphor, language and cognition. “We know a […]

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Research Team

A Polarizing Europe

The term “extremism” has been used often in the context of Europe over the past few years, from religious extremism that fuels terrorism and hate crimes to the movement of Europe's political parties toward the "extremes" of right and left. Indeed, the rise of "extremism" is a reflection of the upheaval in Europe broadly and […]

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Research Team

Re-Representing the Earth Through Landscape, Infrastructure, and Data

How does technology demand a quantitatively driven representation of the earth? How has the increased capacity for technology to store and process data transformed the earth and our ideas about it? What destiny does so-called “Big Data” hold for the myriad crises of the earth? In Fall 2015, Social Science Matrix is sponsoring a research […]

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