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.

Matrix On Point

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Event Date: February 3rd, 2026
4:00pm-5:30pm

Matrix on Point: Corruption in America

This panel will bring together leading scholars from business, political science, and law to examine the many facets of corruption in the United States and the ways it is identified, constrained, and addressed. The panel will feature Sarah Anzia, Ernesto Dal Bó, and Erwin Chemerinsky, with Sean Gailmard moderating.

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Special Event

Recap

Published December 10, 2021

Berkeley Psychology 100 Year Celebration

Recorded on December 8, 2021, this video features a series of talks by members of the University of California, Berkeley Department of Psychology, in celebration of the department's 100th anniversary. The event featured “lightning talks," short form-presentations from four distinguished members of the faculty, showcasing the exciting research being conducted in this top-ranked department.

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Grad Student Profile

Interview

Published December 10, 2021

Addressing Latinx Social Inequality in Later Life

For this Q&A, Julia Sizek, Matrix Content Curator and a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, spoke with two graduate students from UC Berkeley — Isabel García Valdivia and Melanie Z. Plasencia — whose research examines what aging looks like for the Latinx communities in the United States, particularly in California, Mexico, and New Jersey.

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published December 8, 2021

Author Meets Critics: “The Banks Did It: An Anatomy of the Financial Crisis”

Watch the video of our “Authors Meet Critics” discussion focused on "The Banks Did It: An Anatomy of the Financial Crisis," by Neil Fligstein, Class of 1939 Chancellor’s Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. Professor Fligstein was joined in conversation by Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University and author of Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018) and Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy (2021). This event was co-sponsored by the Network for a New Political Economy (N2PE).

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Grad Student Profile

Interview

Published November 30, 2021

The History of Astronomical Illustration: Q&A with Lois Rosson

How do we imagine and illustrate outer space? Lois Rosson, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of History, focuses on the history of astronomical illustration as a lens into the history of science and technology. She worked at NASA for two years before starting graduate school, and recently completed a research internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Matrix content curator Julia Sizek interviewed Rosson about her dissertation research, drawing on astronomical illustrations that Rosson features in her work.

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published November 29, 2021

Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations along Urban Corridors in India

Recorded on November 16, 2021, this video presents an “Authors Meet Critics” panel focused on the book, Shareholder Cities: Land Transformations along Urban Corridors in India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), by Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, with a joint appointment with DCRP and Global Metropolitan Studies. Professor Balakrishnan was joined in conversation by Sharad Chari, Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley, and Michael Watts, Class of ‘63 and Chancellor’s Professor of Geography Emeritus, and Co-Director of Development Studies at UC Berkeley.

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California Spotlight

Recap

Published November 20, 2021

The Labor of Fire: Wildlands Firefighting and Incarceration in California

Recorded on November 10, 2021, this panel discussion considered how changing wildfires have changed not only how fires are fought, but who fights them. The panel included Brandon Smith, Co-founder and Chief Director of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP); Jameson Karns, PhD Candidate in History at UC Berkeley; and Lindsey Raisa Feldman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Memphis. Moderated by John Radke, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.

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