Matrix News
Article
Published July 10, 2026
Matrix Welcomes Eight Research Teams for 2026-2027
Social Science Matrix is pleased to welcome eight new Matrix Research Teams — three faculty-led teams and five graduate student-led teams — for the 2026-2027 academic year. The teams will address topics such as the political economy of wildfire risk, the global politics of declining fertility, and the use of digital tools for governance and development in South Asia.
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published April 30, 2023
Matrix on Point: Border Crossing
For this Matrix on Point panel, we asked UC Berkeley PhD candidates — Pauline White Meeusen, Gisselle Perez-Leon, and Adriana P. Ramirez — to share their ongoing research on borders and migration. Moderated by Irene Bloemraad, Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), which co-sponsored the event.
Learn More >Affiliated Centers
Recap
Published April 28, 2023
Reshaping City Politics? Asian Voters’ Demands for Change in San Francisco and Vancouver
In 2022, Asian voters shocked the political establishment in San Francisco and Vancouver. Presented by UC Berkeley's Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research, this panel featured insiders from both cities, including Ken Sim’s campaign manager, a leader from Vancouver’s Canadian-Chinese community, a leader in the San Francisco school board recall campaign who was appointed to the school board herself, and scholar Neil Malhotra.
Learn More >Affiliated Centers
Recap
Published April 25, 2023
John McWhorter: Pitfalls in the Policing of Language
Recorded on April 7, 2023, this video features a lecture by Professor John McWhorter, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Slavic Department at Columbia University, and a regular columnist for the New York Times. Presented by the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research.
Learn More >Alumni
Interview
Published April 19, 2023
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 […]
Learn More >Lecture
Recap
Published April 17, 2023
Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty
Recorded on February 22, 2023, this video features a lecture by Professor Kadji Amin, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. In this talk, “Training Bourgeois Selves: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Subsumption of Pederasty,” Amin discusses a key architect of Modern Sexuality, the German Jewish homosexual sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.
Learn More >Lecture
Recap
Published April 17, 2023
The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out
Recorded on March 22, 2023, this talk — "The Modern American Industrial Strategy: Building a Clean Energy Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out" — features Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and Chief Economist to the Invest in America Cabinet.
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