Article Type: News

A group of UC Berkeley’s administrators and university researchers will study issues related to sexual harassment and sexual violence. A team of experts in environmental management and law will explore the impacts of cannabis production on communities and ecosystems. A team of scholars in sociology, health, technology, and related areas will address important emerging questions related to genetic ancestry testing. These are just a few examples of projects that will be funded as 2018-2019 Social Science Matrix Research Teams, groups of scholars who are provided with funding to gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question of significance in the social sciences.

“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to support and work with these teams,” said Marion Fourcade, Interim Director of Social Science Matrix. “They cover a wide range of topics, and bring together people across departments and levels of experience. Their research tackles original, timely issues and applies the sort of innovative, cross-disciplinary methods we aim to foster.”

Matrix Research Teams typically integrate participants from multiple social-science disciplines; are focused on a compelling research question with real-world significance; and deploy or develop appropriate methodologies in creative ways. Matrix supports two types of teams: Prospecting Teams receive funding in the amount of $1500 and run for a single semester, typically meeting 5-6 times to explore a new area or question of inquiry and assess whether it has potential for further investigation. Project Teams receive funding in the amount of $5000 and run for two semesters, meeting at least once a month around a defined research problem. Project Teams work toward producing an output, such as a proposal for external funding, a workshop or conference, or a joint publication.

In addition to funding, the teams receive administrative support in meetings in the Matrix offices on the top floor of Barrows Hall. All teams also receive assistance with administering their funding, as well as with research development and communications. This year’s teams were selected following a competitive process, as proposals were evaluated by faculty members from diverse social science disciplines.

Below are summaries of the 2017-2018 Matrix Research Teams, based on the teams’ winning proposals.

2018-2019 Matrix Project Teams

Community Conversations on Sexual Violence and Harassment: Narratives of Activism, Inclusion, Confidentiality, Accountability, and Healing

Incidents of sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH) have been a focus of national headlines this year as a social and political movement swept the country. SVSH is also a longstanding topic of interest among social science researchers nationally, and UC Berkeley administrators and practitioners are making efforts to improve SVSH support, procedure, and policy on campus. Yet there is often too little connection between the administrators and practitioners working to reduce SVSH on campus and the researchers who carry out the university’s academic mission. This Matrix Project Team will work to bridge this gap by convening a series of panel discussions among on-campus practitioners and researchers across different disciplines, including psychology, sociology, law, and community dynamics, all of which are necessary to prevent further trauma and recidivism as well as to promote healing. “Sexual violence requires an interdisciplinary solution, because it is an interdisciplinary problem,” the team wrote in their successful proposal. “With support from Matrix, we can give those working on our campus a platform to collaborate, potentially transforming our campus culture and the field of violence prevention and response at large.”

Formation of interdisciplinary research group to study the socio-ecological impacts of cannabis production

The recent legalization and regulation of cannabis production and consumption in California represent an unprecedented change in public policy that may have profound impacts on the environment and communities across the state. At this moment of change, there is a critical need for scholarship on cannabis-producing communities and their relation to the natural environment. This Matrix Research Team will address that need by bringing together faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students from the College of Letters and Science, College of Natural Resources, and School of Law to study the socio-ecological impacts of cannabis production in California, focusing on three core areas: (1) policy and regulation, (2) environmental impacts, and (3) the social relations and agricultural practices of cannabis-producing communities. They will focus on developing intellectual exchange among team members, organizing a cannabis research and policy workshop, and developing opportunities for future funding. “We understand that regulation affects farmers’ decisions and ultimately the environment,” they wrote in their proposal. “We also believe that scientific information on the ecological impacts of cannabis in turn influences farmer practices and regulation. By investigating the system as a whole, we aim to understand cannabis agriculture in all its complexities.”

Seeing Like a Valley: Locating the Moral Visions of Silicon Valley Culture

Like modern states, the industrial region known as Silicon Valley has developed through attempts to regularize, rationalize, and codify the world. These ways of knowing have favored emerging technologies and new modes of organization. But what are the effects of this developing view to the world? The “Seeing Like a Valley” Matrix Research Team will bring UC Berkeley affiliates in contact with others who are studying or intervening in Silicon Valley to understand the place of this unique region in shaping not just new technological practices, but new moral visions. The team will experiment with practices for theoretically-informed events and interventions, and will convene an international group of scholars, policy makers, technologists, journalists, artists, and activists to explore the moral visions emerging out of the world’s tech hub. The team’s work will include a series of “public encounters,” monthly field trips and bi-monthly salons that promote an active public intellectual culture across and beyond UC Berkeley, as well as monthly planning meetings on campus. They ultimately hope to produce an edited volume designed for a general audience.

Comparing the Politics of Computer Vision in the United States, China, and Europe

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to visualize the social world, and computer vision technologies are being developed according to divergent standards in different countries. This Matrix Research Team will study, discuss, and provide perspective on the emerging comparative political economy of computer vision. The group’s work will focus on three case studies—United States, China, and Europe— that each reflect different potential models for integrating computer vision technology into civil society: respectively, either stratifying it through new fault lines of racial and gender inequality; erasing it through bureaucratic centralization; or resisting its application in industry and private life, as with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Based on the ongoing work of cross-disciplinary Ph.D. candidates, the researchers will share findings, organize a group-authored working paper, and coordinate a panel on the topic of cross-comparative social science research on computer vision.

2018-2019 Matrix Prospecting Teams

Causal Conversations

The proliferation of data sources and the advent of computationally intensive analytic algorithms have multiplied the possibilities for non-experimental (i.e., observational) research. Much of that research highlights prediction, yet remains agnostic about cause, a successful strategy as long as the causal structures undergirding the phenomena remain stable. This raises concerns, as practical action or public policy without an understanding of cause is blind, and methodological discussions rarely reach empirical researchers, in part because those discussions are often too formal and thus too insular. Led by Samuel Lucas, Professor of Sociology, this Matrix team’s work will explore the emerging issues and questions about causality in the digital age; the group’s work will focus on interviewing key scholars of causality from statistics, philosophy, and a variety of social sciences The project will allow each to convey to empirical researchers key insights on causality in an accessible, conversational way. The interviews will be integrated into thematic sets, and will ultimately be compiled to form an accessible volume.

I Regret to Inform You That Your Private Information Has Been Compromised

Led by Naniette Coleman, a Ph.D. student in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, this Matrix Prospecting Team will focus on important questions around privacy, which the organizers explained in their proposal is “one of the central issues of importance of our time…. Despite our appreciation of privacy, police officers wear body cameras, customer loyalty programs track purchases, and the Transportation Safety Administration performs full body scans. This paradox illuminates the deep ambivalence in modern American society about privacy, and a largely untapped area of research in the social sciences.” The team will bring together students and scholars from across the UC Berkeley campus—as well as outside speakers—to form a privacy-focused social science community at Berkeley. In addition to engaging experts in diverse dimensions of privacy, they will create annotated bibliographies and Wikipedia pages to serve as resources for other scholars.”There are many of us working on these topics alone or together by happenstance; it is time we formed a more permanent community and worked together,” the researchers wrote. “Matrix can be a catalyst for that happening.”

Native/Immigrant/Refugee: Crossings and Divides

Refugees, immigrants, and natives—whether indigenous persons or not—are typically constructed as separate legal and social categories, and thus studied in isolation from one another. Who is a refugee, who is an immigrant, and who is a native? These are critical questions at a time when nation-states are tightening and manipulating their borders and increasingly criminalizing mobility. This interdisciplinary research project will examine how these communities, and the fields of studies developed to examine them, in fact converge, displace, and shape each other. The researchers will examine how legal regimes and public discourse produce categories that determine the corresponding legal entitlements and cultural claims based on membership in these categories; they will look at how gender is construed in discourse and policy, and the particular burdens placed upon women and families. The group will invite cross-disciplinary conversations with Berkeley faculty whose research interests align with the project, and they will apply for a major external grant and build toward a future conference and publication.

The DNA of Media Accounts on Genetic Ancestry Testing

A growing number of people are taking genetic ancestry tests (GAT), and companies like FamilyTreeDNA, AncestryDNA, and 23andMe now make up a multibillion-dollar industry dominating both popular and academic discourse. Literature on GAT largely attributes consumer participation to a desire for individuals to identify biological relatives, validate genealogical records, fill gaps in family histories, and learn about one’s health dispositions. Existing research, however, inadequately explains how these desires came to be. While word-of-mouth marketing and network effects come to mind, one major mechanism neglected by scholars is the effect of mainstream media. Anecdotal evidence suggests that talk shows, documentaries, news articles, advertisements and trade books featuring GAT present a homogenous picture of the process—that it brings about life-changing, transformative, and largely positive experiences. In doing so, what narratives are being sidelined? What are the strategies deployed by content producers? How can we classify existing narratives and their symbolic, psychological and health effects? By systematically examining a diverse pool of media content and forum reactions towards these media elements, this Matrix Prospecting Team hopes to bridge the gap between knowledge transmission and consumer participation. They will conclude by considering the implications for consumers, the GAT market, and policy governing this sector.

Berkeley Black Geographies

The Berkeley Black Geographies (BBG) project will foster intellectual creative space and proposes an intervention into the colonial canon of academic disciplines. BBG looks at the ways that many disciplines utilize Black radical thought and geographic methods in order to mobilize rigorous and meaningful theory and praxis for interdisciplinary projects while countering the anti-Black and colonial histories that traditionally structure academic disciplines. This project will serve as a follow up to the campus-funded Berkeley Black Geographies Conference in October 2017. The primary function of this project is to facilitate reading groups, writing workshops, the development of an independent publication and a Black Geographies curriculum that transcends disciplinary boxes. It will bring together students and faculty from Public Health, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, African American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, ESPM, City & Regional Planning, the Berkeley Center for New Media, and Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. “The BBG project has already received positive feedback from interdisciplinary scholars from around the country,” the organizing scholars wrote in their proposal, “and will have important implications for academics looking to advance intellectual development in questions that meaningfully attend to Black lives and equitable spatial, social, and economic development.”

Child Marriage and Youth empowerment: Directions for Future Research, practice, and training

Child marriage refers to a union—formal or informal—in which one or both members of a couple marry before the age of 18. Annually, an estimated 15 million girls marry before their 18th birthdays. Evidence shows that marriage below the age of 18 increases risks related to health, education, opportunity and, well-being. It increases girls’ exposure to partner violence throughout their lives and promotes poverty. Child marriage takes place in every region across the globe, including within the US, and the causes, consequences, and prevalence vary among and within countries. Through monthly conversations and presentations from researchers across Berkeley in multiple disciplines, this Matrix Prospecting Team aims to gain a broader and deeper understanding of child marriage and the complex set of social factors that shape adolescence. In doing so, the scholars’ vision is to promote well-being during this pivotal life phase and pave the way to successful transitions to adulthood. They plan to do this through discussing innovative, rigorous, and interdisciplinary research and evaluation design, and considering how this evidence can contribute to cross-sectoral programs and policies. This team is led by scholars who have experience leading research in a number of critical areas relevant to child marriage from multiple disciplines across the university. They have scholars engaged in the fields of education; public health, global health, and mental health; youth and adolescent studies; demography; gender studies; international development; and public policy.

Queer Ecologies: Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Animal Behavior Science

The Queer Ecologies Prospecting Team will examine how historically exclusionary and hierarchical ideas of race, sex, and gender are both replicated and disrupted by contemporary laboratory and fieldwork practices, as well as theoretical innovations, in animal behavior sciences. The group conceives of animal behavior sciences—such as studies of mate choice and sexual display—as cultural, social, and political practices. As scientists work to understand animal behavior along the lines of agency, choice, sex, pairing, and bonding, “we are also often co-producing understandings about ourselves and our social worlds that have significant consequences for who counts as human, who has the right to ‘pair,’ and what kinds of behaviors count as ‘normal’,” they wrote in their proposal. While much Queer Ecology scholarship emerges from humanities disciplines, this team uniquely cross-pollinates theories, research questions, and political debates among social and natural scientists . They will generate a research agenda (for academics and social-change agents alike) that takes seriously the practices, instruments, field experiences, communications, media representations, and political alliances that constitute the very laboratories and scientific communities in and through which knowledge of “queer animals” and “queer ecosystems” is being produced.

Masculinity and Capitalism

Recent decades have brought about a striking increase in inequality among men across many scales. Within the regime of globalized financialized capitalism. manufacturing has been relocated to low-wage regions, and many of the jobs have simply disappeared because of automation. At the same time, in the upper echelons of financial capitalism, elite men continue to predominate, simultaneously fueling profitable market “bubbles” through rhetorics of masculine performance and excusing market crises through narratives that reference uncontrollable male hormones. The new regime has both recruited women into the paid workforce, and promoted state and corporate disinvestment from social welfare. Understanding the relationships among these varied discourses requires not just new empirical investigations, but new categories. Taking on this challenge will be the subject of this Matrix Prospecting Team, which is interested in understanding better the relationship between masculinity, conventionally defined in relationship to the sphere of production, and the changing contours of that sphere of production.

Gender and Technology

UC Berkeley is an ideal place from which to study the tech industry. The San Francisco Bay Area serves as the headquarters of most large tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, as well as countless startups. UC Berkeley also produces a large number of tech workers. Yet no groups on campus are currently working to bring researchers together to discuss gender inequality in the tech industry. In spite of recent efforts to recruit and retain women, gender inequality remains a defining feature of the tech industry. The goal of this Matrix Prospecting Team will be to facilitate collaboration between researchers from various disciplines, methodological approaches, and institutions who are interested in issues surrounding gender and technology. Over the course this semester-long project, the team will work to organize a day-long workshop for researchers interested in gender and technology. This workshop will provide an opportunity for scholars to present original research on topics related to gender and technology, while also providing a venue for researchers to strategize new methodological approaches for research in this area. In conjunction with this workshop, team leaders will also develop an online platform that will help attendees keep in touch, share ideas and resources, and ultimately facilitate collaboration.

UC Berkeley’s Social Science Matrix and Sciences Po, a premier university based in Paris, France, are pleased to announce the recipients of an inaugural set of grants designed to encourage collaboration between scholars from the two institutions. Through the Matrix-Sciences Po Collaboration Grants program, each institution has committed to provide a pool of funding to enable graduate students and faculty members to work together on a cross-institutional basis.

Sciences Po and UC Berkeley are two of the world’s leading centers of research in the social sciences; both are home to renowned experts in public health, urban development, security, environmental policy, and other pressing 21st-century issues. Four teams of scholars were selected to receive grants following evaluation by faculty review boards from the two partner institutions. Projects were selected in part for their potential to lead to ongoing partnerships; contribute to their home departments, schools, or programs; and create opportunities for graduate students to participate. In addition to funding, Matrix and Sciences Po will each provide meeting and work space for successful applicants, as well as administrative support and other services.

Below are summaries of the projects that will be funded through the inaugural Matrix/Sciences Po Collaboration Grants:

The Hissène Habré Trial: A New Model for Prosecuting International Crimes in National Courts?

In this cross-disciplinary collaboration, researchers from UC Berkeley and Sciences Po will examine the role of national courts in providing accountability for international crimes in Africa. Their research is focused on the trial of Chad’s former president, Hissène Habré, who was convicted of crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes before the Extraordinary African Chambers, a novel judicial mechanism born out of an agreement between Chad, Senegal, and the African Union.

The team’s members will use their grant to work on a book that is scheduled to be published by Oxford University Press in early 2019. The book will present the history and significance of the Habré case, highlight direct actors’ perspectives and practical experiences of the trial, and offer academic analysis of the trial in the broader context of international criminal law generally.

“As researchers, we were interested in how this trial actually happened and what aspects, if any, are replicable,” the scholars wrote in their proposal. “In early 2017, we interviewed the trial’s direct actors—mostly Senegalese and Chadian lawyers, judges, journalists, funders, and civil society actors who operationalized the trial. In doing so, we documented the practical and political realities affecting their day to day work. Now, with an invitation from Oxford University Press to produce an edited volume of direct actors’ perspectives and broader academic analysis, we will make a significant contribution to understanding of not only this trial but also potential models for the domestic prosecution of international crimes in Africa and beyond.”

Participating scholars from UC Berkeley include Eric Stover, Adjunct Professor in Law and Public Health and Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center; and Kim Thuy Seelinger, Lecturer in Law and Director of the Sexual Violence Program at the Human Rights Center. Collaborators from Sciences Po include Horatia Muir Watt, Professor and Co-Director of the Global Governance Studies Program; Jeremy Perelman, Assistant Professor at the Sciences Po Law School; and Dr. Sharon Weill, Senior Lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) and Associate Researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI).

The Social Life of the Sediment Balance: A Social and Geomorphic Approach to the Transformation of River Systems and Deltas

This collaborative project will explore the social and natural processes that lead to the modification of sediment balance in rivers. Interdisciplinary scholarship on river systems and society is usually concerned with water flows, but rarely with sediment balance. Sediments, however, are essential components of river systems. Hydroelectric dams, canals, navigation, sand and gravel mining, and other human uses alter sediment fluxes, often with detrimental consequences on the river morphology and ecology as well as on coastal land.

The project will bring together two scholars with different perspectives on this topic: Giacomo Parrinello, Assistant Professor of Environmental History at the Centre for History at Sciences Po (CHSP), brings a social science and history background, while G. Mathias Kondolf, Professor of Environmental Planning and Geography in UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, is an expert in the geomorphology of river systems. The collaborators, who reached out to each other for the first time as a result of this grant program, will explore how the dynamics of the river systems are shaped by policy, institutional, and legal frameworks. They will focus their research on diverse river basins, such as the Rhône, the Po, the Mekong, the Mississippi-Missouri system, the Colorado, and the Sacramento.

“The collaborating faculty have both developed an interest in the intersection of sociotechnical and geomorphological processes in river systems, and aim to combine their expertise to shed new light on a key aspect of human-environment interaction in fluvial environments,” the scholars explained in their proposal. “By systematically compiling geomorphic data on these river systems, their historical transformations, and resulting channel responses, with a social-science-based analysis of the governance context, we hope to push forward interdisciplinary efforts to better understand these transformed river systems and how they can be best managed.”

Diasporic Identities: Southeast Asian Incorporation Experiences in Europe and America—The Post-Refugee Generations

In the four decades since the initial mass resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the Southeast Asian communities in Europe and the U.S. have registered a significant demographic shift. Yet surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to these communities. A team of researchers from UC Berkeley and Sciences Po will use a Collaboration Grant to convene European and American researchers working on Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian diasporas to engage in critical, cross-disciplinary discourse on the post-refugee generations.

“Despite the resurgent attention to immigration issues in Europe in recent years, we know little of the integration experiences of these earlier but relatively recent refugee communities in Europe,” the researchers explained in their proposal. “In particular, we have virtually no knowledge of the post-refugee generations that are an integral part of the French cultural, political, economic, and social fabric. These knowledge gaps deprive us of critical insights that would be relevant and invaluable in view of the current refugee situations in Europe, and the intensifying debates engendered by demographic and cultural shifts both in the U.S. and in France….”

Leading the collaboration are Khatharya Um, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, and Hélène Le Bail, a political scientist on the permanent faculty at Sciences Po and a research fellow at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI). Um is currently working on a book project on Southeast Asian diaspora; she has completed her research on the communities in the U.S. and is deepening her research on the communities in France. Le Bail’s previous scholarly focus on Chinese migration has evolved into her current research interest in second-generation Sino-Vietnamese populations in France.

“We envision this initiative as paving the way for more extensive exchange and research collaboration not only between Berkeley and Sciences Po but also with other universities in France and Europe, and generation of new scholarship and publications, including a co-edited volume,” the scholars explained. “Ultimately, we hope to foster a robust transcontinental community of scholars, researchers, artists, and advocates working on critical Southeast Asian diaspora studies, a space that is emerging in the U.S. but currently does not exist in Europe. With its attention to transnational and diasporic concerns, this future transnational community would provide a much needed home for new innovative scholarship that is not focused singularly on Southeast Asia, and that brings critical approaches and inquiries to both area studies, and to diaspora, transnational, and community studies.”

Political Representation in India: The Berkeley-Sciences Po Indian Legislators Project

This project aims to understand the profiles of national and state legislators and the changing nature of political representation in India. The collaboration will bring together scholars from UC Berkeley and Sciences Po who have each developed unique research approaches to understanding Indian politics, and will integrate previous major data collection efforts related to politicians in India.

“We see this grant as an opportunity to bring together our shared interests to maximize the synergies and quality of our research output,” the researchers wrote in their proposal, “and to initiate what may be a broader and longer term research partnership focused on the political behavior of India’s state and national legislators.”

Based at Sciences Po, Christophe Jaffrelot, a Senior Research Fellow at Centre de Recherches Internationales, is building a major database on the sociological profile of Indian national and state legislators, including information on caste, class, gender, and family backgrounds. These data are critical for assessing trends in the democratization of political and descriptive representation in India and also allow assessment of legislators’ political trajectories, for instance, the extent to which they shift from one party to another or belong to dynastic political families.

From UC Berkeley, Jennifer Bussell, Gruber Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Goldman School of Public Policy, focuses her research on political representation, service delivery, and the political economy of corruption in India; she recently completed a book manuscript on the constituency service provided by state and national legislators in that country. Bussell has used data collected by Jaffrelot and collaborators to assess the relationship between caste background and political responsiveness.

Adding to the collaboration, Thad Dunning, Robson Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and Director of the Center on the Politics of Development, is a scholar of comparative politics with an emphasis on distributive politics, ethnic politics, and political economy. He research focuses on the distributional impact of political reservations (electoral quotas for marginalized castes) in village councils in India, and provides an important foundation for understanding the relationships between local brokers and the higher-level legislators studied by Bussell and Jaffrelot.

“We envision that our collaboration will integrate our previous research in novel ways,” the researchers explained. “Overall, our goal is to combine our previous separate efforts in a productive manner to produce a more comprehensive understanding of the ways in which social background does, and does not, affect the manner by which Indian politicians engage with their constituents and serve as effective representatives. More generally, we expect that this may serve as a starting point for a broader research agenda on the political behavior of India’s legislators, writ large.”

Social Science Matrix is proud to be publishing a new book series in collaboration with the University of California Press. This series seeks to exploit new developments both in the social sciences and in the nature of publishing to bring work on topics of critical importance by adventurous scholars to a wide audience in a timely manner.

In keeping with Matrix’s goal of supporting innovative and collaborative work within the social sciences, the series is seeking content that transcends old disciplinary constraints and conventional categorizations to pursue multidisciplinary, self-aware, data-driven research from new perspectives—and report on that work in ways that reach well beyond conventional expectations and boundaries of scholarly publishing.

Books will be published as part of the UC Press Luminos Open Access publishing venture. We aim to make works in the series available rapidly throughout the world in digital form (while simultaneously offering the possibility of relatively cheap print-on-demand alternatives). In collaboration with UC Press, Matrix will disseminate authors’ work, deploying our communications platform to generate levels of publicity not typically available to scholarly publications.

The series is open to conventional monographs, but we also would be interested in working with authors to develop some of their general ideas or most powerful findings into readable long-essay form. The editors plan to work closely with authors and to oversee an effective but swift editorial process.

As part of this venture, we hope to advance beyond conventional expectations for academic literature both in content and format and will lend all the support we can to our authors to produce such work.

Deadline

The deadline for the initial review of proposals is May 1, 2018. Following this date, proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis.

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UC Berkeley’s Social Science Matrix has signed an agreement with Sciences Po, a premier university based in Paris, France, to provide seed funding for collaborative research partnerships between scholars from the two universities. To kick off this initiative, each institution has committed to create a pool of funding for “seedling grants” that will enable graduate students and faculty members to work together on a cross-institutional basis.

“From the beginning, the leadership of Matrix has been committed to the proposition that we should have an international focus,” explains Bill Hanks, Director of Social Science Matrix and Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at UC Berkeley. “Sciences Po has a mission that is consistent with ours, they are very international, and they are at the top echelon of political science, with a focus that is broadly and creatively conceived to include history, religion, and society. We felt it was a natural match.”

The Matrix-Sciences Po partnership complements an existing program enabling undergraduate students to simultaneously pursue bachelor’s degrees at UC Berkeley and Sciences Po. “Over the last couple yea­rs, UC Berkeley has completed a very interesting and highly successful program of exchange with Sciences Po at the undergraduate level,” Hanks says. “We saw that we could do something parallel at the level of graduate students and faculty, and that the proper touchpoint for that should be Matrix, as we can help connect to other departments in the division.”

The new program will kick off in Fall 2017, when the two institutions will issue a call for proposals to their respective research communities. Following approval by faculty review boards from the partner institutions, successful applicants will receive small grants that can be used to support travel, seminars, workshops, or other activities. Projects will be selected in part for their potential to lead to ongoing partnerships; contribute to their home departments, schools, or programs; and create opportunities for graduate students to participate.

In addition to funding, Matrix and Sciences Po will each provide meeting and work space for successful applicants, as well as administrative support and other services. “Sciences Po researchers who come to Berkeley will work within a department, but Social Science Matrix will offer a partial institutional home, as we will help them branch out on the Berkeley campus,” Hanks says. “The objective is to maintain the same philosophy that is part of all of Matrix and keep the structure light and flexible.”

The partnership has potential to lead to valuable research with far-reaching impact, as both Sciences Po and UC Berkeley are home to renowned experts in public health, urban development, security, environmental policy, and other pressing 21st-century issues. Hanks emphasizes that the purpose of this program is not to focus on issues specific to France or California, but rather to apply international perspectives to global challenges. “In the social sciences, we confront problems that depend in intimate ways upon the social systems in which they arise,” Hanks says. “Generalized problems like climate change affect all of us, but the specifics vary by geography. Immigration is a global problem, but it has a different shape in different places.”

The initiative is a direct extension of Social Science Matrix’s mission to support cross-disciplinary social science that has value beyond the campus, Hanks explains. “One of the commitments of Matrix under my directorship is to understand different ways of framing fundamental problems that transcend the academy,” he says. “We need to be international in order to be really smart. We need to be able to take multiple perspectives on problems that are acute for us—and acute in other terms for other societies. I hope we can one day develop exchange relationships with multiple institutions in multiple countries. If I were to realize my dream, Matrix would become a place where people from far-flung parts of the world who would not otherwise meet each other do meet one another—and enter into a true community of debate.”

A Request for Proposals for this program will be released in Fall 2017. Stay tuned to the Matrix website and sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on this initiative.

Social Science Matrix, UC Berkeley’s flagship center for cross-disciplinary social science research, will soon be publishing a series of digital monographs in collaboration the University of California Press (UC Press).

“For the past couple years, we have had on the table the idea of creating a publication series that expresses the Matrix view toward cutting-edge social science research, a series consistent with our aims and objectives and values,” explains Bill Hanks, Director of Social Science Matrix and Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at UC Berkeley. “When this opportunity presented itself, it was too promising to not  pursue.”

The initial project plan is to produce between two to three manuscripts a year, each ranging in length between 150-250 pages. The monographs will be published as part UC Press’s new Luminos Open Access Book Series. Hanks will edit the Matrix Series in collaboration with Carla Hesse, Executive Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science, and Paul Duguid, an adjunct full professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. An advisory board composed of UC Berkeley faculty members will help solicit and assess proposals.

The monographs will be written by UC Berkeley researchers, as well as “contributors around the world whose work both reflects and extends Matrix goals,” explained the three editors in their proposal, which outlines a vision “to publish innovative social-scientific scholarship to address critically important, contemporary questions from fresh, inclusive, and innovative perspectives.”

The series will reflect Matrix’ mission to break down the divisions between traditional social-science disciplines and employ novel research methods, including data-driven analysis, to address global issues like climate change, population flows, economic security, and social justice. The hypothetical topics included in the proposal range from a history of the beef industry in the United States to an examination of the data-gathering methods used in health care, education, development, and other domains. “We really want experimental, front-edge research here that’s pushing boundaries,” says Hanks. “We’re interested in research from every corner of the social science landscape.”

Stay tuned to the Social Science Matrix website and newsletter for more information on this initiative, or visit the UC Press page for our series.