UC Berkeley’s flagship institute for social science research

Our purpose is captured in our name: we provide an organizational framework—a “matrix”—that supports cross-disciplinary research pursued by social scientists across the University of California, Berkeley campus and beyond.

Special Event

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Event Date: May 8th, 2024
2:00pm-3:00pm

Global Economic Developments: A View from the IMF

UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff are invited to join us on May 8, 2024 from 2:00pm-3:00pm for a town hall meeting with Gita Gopinath, the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. The event will feature an interview of Dr Gopinath conducted by current UC Berkeley students on topics ranging from debt sustainability to economic fragmentation and the role of the dollar in the global economy, followed by an open question period.

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Article

Interview

Published April 25, 2022

The Terracene: An Interview with Salar Mameni

What does the War on Terror have to do with the Anthropocene? In this interview, Salar Mameni, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, discusses their book project, "Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics."

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Affiliated Centers

Recap

Published April 22, 2022

(Why) Are Democrats Losing the Latino Vote?

Recorded on April 19, 2022, this panel discussion was presented by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research. The panel featured 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.

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Event Type

Recap

Published April 22, 2022

Catherine Hall: “Racial Capitalism: What’s In A Name?”

Racial capitalism has become a widely used term – but how should we define it and what specific forms does it take? Recorded on April 20, 2022, this talk by esteemed historian Catherine Hall focused on 18th-century 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.

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Matrix On Point

Recap

Published April 15, 2022

The Future of Money: Mobile Money, Social Media, and Cashless Economies

Focusing on forms of cashless payment, such as mobile money and apps, this "Matrix on Point" panel explored 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. The panel featured Kevin Donovan, Lecturer in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh; Lana Swartz, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia; and Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The panel was moderated by Marion Fourcade, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Director of Social Science Matrix.

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Podcast

Interview

Published April 12, 2022

What Happened to the Week? An Interview with David Henkin

For this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek interviewed David M. Henkin, the Margaret Byrne Professor of History, about his book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Make Us Who We Are. With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources — including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries — Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the 19th century.

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California Spotlight

Recap

Published April 12, 2022

The Social and Economic Impacts of Wildfires

Recorded on April 4, 2022, this panel focused on the contemporary social and economic impacts of wildfires in California during another record-breaking fire season. How have fires changed during the last five years, and with what impacts on the economy? How might policy-makers and economists respond to the changing fire season? The panel was co-sponsored by the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) and presented as part of the Social Science Matrix California Spotlight series.

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