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.

Authors Meet Critics

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Event Date: April 7th, 2026
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Trevor Jackson: “The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World”

Join us for a panel on "The Insatiable Machine," by Professor Trevor Jackson, which traces capitalism’s development from the accidental construction of an international monetary system to the creation of banking, the emergence of a new form of slavery, fossil–fuel industrialization, and finally the global capitalist system spread by imperialism.

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Podcast

Interview

Published March 30, 2021

Matrix Podcast: Interview with Brittany Birberick

In this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Brittany Birberick, an anthropology PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley — and a former Matrix Dissertation Fellow. Birberick's dissertation project focuses on urban transformation in Johannesburg, South Africa. More broadly, she writes and thinks about economies, migration, temporality, and aesthetics within an urban context.

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published March 15, 2021

Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica

Recorded on March 10, 2021, this video features a panel discussion about Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica, a book by Jovan Scott Lewis, Assistant Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley.

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Matrix On Point

Recap

Published March 15, 2021

Pandemic Lessons: Assessing Educational Inequalities in the Wake of COVID-19

Presented by the University of California, Berkeley's Social Science Matrix on March 9, 2021, this video features an online panel discussion addressing what we have learned about educational inequalities after a year of pandemic-related school closures.

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Solidarity and Strife

Recap

Published February 28, 2021

The True Costs of Misinformation: Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium

Recorded on February 19, 2021, this video features a lecture by Joan Donovan, Research Director for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

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Authors Meet Critics

Recap

Published February 19, 2021

Bloc by Bloc: How to Build a Global Enterprise for the New Regional Order

Joined by a panel of scholars, CLTC Faculty Director Steve Weber discussed his book, which outlines a framework for how firms should position themselves for the new economic geography.

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Podcast

Interview

Published February 13, 2021

Matrix Podcast: Interview with Clancy Wilmott

In this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Clancy Wilmott, Assistant Professor in Critical Cartography, Geovisualisation, and Design in the Berkeley Centre for New Media and the Department of Geography. Professor Wilmott comes to UC Berkeley from the Department of Geography at the University of Manchester, where she received her PhD in Human Geography with a multi-site study on the interaction between mobile phone maps, cartographic discourse, and postcolonial landscapes.

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