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: November 24th, 2026
4:00pm-5:30pm

Until the Last Ton: Fossil Fuels in India from Empire to the Climate Crisis

This Authors Meet Critics panel will focus on the book "Until the Last Ton: Fossil Fuels in India from Empire to the Climate Crisis," by Matthew Shutzer, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley — the first history of fossil fuels in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. Professor Shutzer will be joined in conversation by Youjin Chung and Daniel Aldana Cohen, with Michael Watts moderating.

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COVID-19

Published April 17, 2020

Student Futures and Life Under COVID-19

Michael Watts writes that innovative solutions are needed to support students and universities in the era of COVID-19.

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Health

Published April 13, 2020

Hand-washing in the Time of COVID-19

In the era of COVID-19, the public health directive to "wash your hands" is a challenge for people with limited access to clean water, writes UC Berkeley researcher Isha Ray.

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Cities

Article

Published April 8, 2020

Gangs, Labor Mobility, and Development

 A Q&A with Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Political Science, on his research showing the staggering economic toll of living within gang-controlled territory.

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Podcast

Interview

Published March 30, 2020

Matrix Podcast: Interview with Desiree Fields

In this episode, Michael Watts talks with Desiree Fields, Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Fields' research explores the financial technologies, market devices, and historical and geographic contingencies that make it possible to treat housing as a financial asset, and how this process is contested at the urban scale.

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COVID-19

Article and News

Published March 27, 2020

COVID-19: UC Berkeley Social Sciences Portal

A portal for insights about the COVID-19 pandemic from the UC Berkeley social science community

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Workshop/Symposium

Recap

Published March 21, 2020

2020 Advanced Workshop in Climate Change Economics

On January 31 to February 1, Social Science Matrix hosted the Advanced Workshop in Climate Change Economics, which brought together leading scholars from universities around the world to apply the tools of micro- and macroeconomics to understand and tackle the challenge of climate change.

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