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 Lecture

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Alexis Madrigal

Event Date: December 4th, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm

Alexis Madrigal: “To Know a Place”

In this Matrix Distinguished Lecture, journalist Alexis Madrigal — host of KQED's Forum and a contributing writer at The Atlantic — turns his attention to the question of how we come to know a place. Drawing on his background as a reporter, writer, and thinker of cities, landscapes, and histories, he will explore different ways of writing about and understanding place, revealing how perspective, memory, and narrative inform the stories we tell about the world around us.

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Research Highlights

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Published July 29, 2014

Social Networks from History

A new tool developed by a team at UC Berkeley can help build “prosopographies,” social networks based on names, affiliations, and other historical data.

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Research Highlights

Article

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Published July 22, 2014

Do You Trust the Police?

A team of UC Berkeley researchers are helping devise new methods for measuring levels of trust between local communities and the police.

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