New Directions
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Event Date: March 10th, 2026
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT
New Directions: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Perspectives
Colonial legacies continue to shape political, social, and intellectual life. While colonialism is often treated as a historical period, its structures and logics persist in contemporary debates around race, territory, knowledge, and power. This panel — part of the Social Science Matrix New Directions series — will bring together UC Berkeley graduate students from anthropology, geography, and sociology to examine how colonial histories are reproduced, contested, and reimagined across different contexts.
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published May 4, 2021
Truth & Denial: Searching for Information in the Digital Era
On April 22, 2021, a "Matrix on Point" panel discussion focused on questions of objectivity, disinformation, and the construction of truth from a media-consumption (rather than media-production) perspective, focusing on how internet users find information, how algorithms play a deterministic role in search results, and how lies propagate and solidify.
Learn More >Other Events
News
Published May 1, 2021
2021 Social Sciences Fest and Matrix Open House
On April 9, faculty members and graduate students from across the UC Berkeley Division of Social Sciences joined together online for the 2021 Social Sciences Fest and Matrix Open House, a celebration of the past year's accomplishments of the division.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published April 26, 2021
“Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity”
Recorded on April 19, 2021, this panel featured a conversation about the book, "Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity," by Armando Lara-Millán, Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Co-sponsored by the Center for Study of Law and Society (CSLS).
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published April 15, 2021
The Long History and Present Surge of Anti-Asian Violence
Recorded on April 1, 2021, this panel — presented as part of the Berkeley Conversations and Matrix on Point series — considered the long history of anti-Asian racism and present-day patterns linked to the pandemic and to cultural anxieties about Asian ascendancy and Western decline.
Learn More >Solidarity and Strife
Recap
Published April 13, 2021
Beyond Competition: Alternative Discovery Procedures & The Postcapitalist Public Sphere
On March 19, 2021, Matrix presented a lecture by Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Presented as part of the SSRC-sponsored research initiative, "Solidarity and Strife: Democracies in a Time of Pandemic.”
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published April 12, 2021
Matrix Podcast: Interview with Rebecca Herman
In this podcast, Michael Watts interviews Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley. Professor Herman's research and writing examine modern Latin American history in a global context. Her first book, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, reconstructs the history of U.S. military basing in Latin America during World War II.
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