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2017-2018 Matrix Research Teams Announced

Published May 23, 2017

Social Science Matrix is pleased to announce our 2017-2018 Matrix Research Teams, groups of scholars from across disciplines who will take on important challenges ranging from human rights and immigration to infrastructure, digital privacy, and communication between physicians and their patients.

How will the labor force be affected by the rise of artificial intelligence? How can linguistic theory help reduce misunderstandings between doctors and their patients? How can courts use social media to investigate and prosecute war criminals? How can public investments in infrastructure ensure equitable access and benefits for disadvantaged groups?

These are among the questions that will be considered by a newly selected cohort of Social Science Matrix Research Teams that will convene during the 2017-2018 academic year. Matrix Research Teams are groups of scholars who gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question of significance in the social sciences. Teams typically integrate participants from several social-science disciplines and diverse ranks (i.e. faculty and graduate students); are focused on a compelling research question with real-world significance; and deploy or develop appropriate methodologies in creative ways.

Matrix supports three types of Research Teams: Prospecting, Project, and Theme 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. Matrix also provides $7500 to teams whose work directly relates to our current theme, “Questioning the Evidence,” and considers changing concepts, practices, and norms related to the collection, deployment, and analysis of data and evidence in the social sciences—and in society at large.

In addition to funding, Matrix Teams receive administrative support in meetings in our 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. “We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to support and work with these teams,” said Lynsay Skiba, Associate Director for Programs at Matrix. “Their research tackles timely issues and applies the sort of innovative, cross-disciplinary methods we aim to foster.”

Below are brief descriptions of the 2017-2018 Matrix Research Teams. Stay tuned to our website for more in-depth profiles of these teams in the coming months.

Expert Language, Native Language: Toward a Framework for Translation in Clinical (Mis)communication

Matrix Prospecting Team (Fall 2017)

Bringing together experts in linguistics, cognitive and data scientists, medical doctors, bioethicists, and medical anthropologists, this Matrix Prospecting Team aims to generate a theoretical framework to address challenges in medical communication, specifically misunderstandings between doctors and patients. “Our project explores challenges in clinical communication, analyzing conversations between patients and physicians via the lens of linguistics and anthropology,” the team wrote in their proposal. “Our prospecting group aims to produce a journal article for a physician audience describing our theoretical model, and through our model, to provide specific recommendations for ways to improve physician communication. Ultimately, this project aims both to better clinical communication and therefore health outcomes, and to develop theoretical frameworks that can ground future research on expert knowledge and communication challenges across disciplines.”

Working, Learning, and Earning in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Considering the Implications of Computation Intensive Automation, Big Data, and Platforms

Matrix Prospecting Team (Fall 2017)

What will the future of human work look like in the age of machine learning? This Matrix Prospecting Team will develop a research agenda focused on understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor and the economy. “The objective is classic and enduring: sustain the equitable growth of employment and productivity to assure expanding real incomes of the community,” the researchers explained in their proposal. “A digital era strategy for sustained productivity growth and good jobs is required. Can the information and communication technology (IcT) transformation generate productivity growth sufficient to sustain real rising incomes? Or, will IcT innovation with platform technologies, big data, and computation intensive automation, including AI and machine learning, displace work and workers? The project’s intent is to understand and shape the digital revolution, to assure productivity growth and good jobs with rising real incomes in an equitable community.” Bringing together scholars from engineering, business, and other domains, this team hopes to develop a “campus-wide Berkeley centered research agenda” and “make Berkeley a center of thought and debate” on this important 21st-century question.

The Origin of States

Prospecting (Spring 2018)

It is a question that has challenged historians, archaeologists, and other scholars for years: why did some human populations transition from living in scattered groups of hunter-gatherers to gathering in cities governed by a centralized state, while others did not? Integrating faculty, PhD students and undergraduate students with backgrounds in economics, political science, anthropology, archaeology, statistics, and computer science, this Matrix Prospecting Team will address this question by developing an automated computer program that generates site-specific quantitative data about more than 2000 archaological sites around the world. The program will integrate data from thousands of academic publications in archaeology, as well as other datasets compiled by archaeologists, geologists, and climate scientists, to explore how changes in early societies are associated with their environment and changes therein. “Our project aims to generate quantitative information from qualitative textual information of archaeology publications so that researchers can empirically examine various theories on state formation and, more broadly, on the progression of socio-political complexity,” the team’s organizers wrote in their proposal, noting that the issue is “not only critical for our understanding of early human history, but may also illuminate shortcomings and successes of modern nations.”

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

Prospecting (Spring 2018)

“Privacy is one of the central issues of importance of our time,” wrote the organizers of this Matrix Prospecting Team in their successful proposal. “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.” This Matrix Prospecting 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. The group will bring in speakers who are experts in diverse dimensions of privacy, and they will create annotated bibliographies and Wikipedia pages that will 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.”

Migration, Racialization, and Gender: Comparing Filipino Migration to France and the United States

Matrix Project Team (Two Semesters)

The Philippines plays a major role in international migration as a leading sending country of professional and low-skilled workers to various parts of the world. Filipinos have immigrated to the US and France as laborers, especially health care providers and domestic workers, but also as family members of immigrants, and spouses/fiancées of national citizens. Despite their contributions, these migrants have been and continue to be marginalized and vulnerable in both French and American societies. This Matrix Project Team, a continuation of a Fall 2016 Prospecting Team, will build upon its previous research dissemination and bibliographic and translation work by inviting more researchers in North America and Europe to participate, producing innovative ways to visually map and document Filipino migration to the San Francisco Bay Area and Paris, and organizing a public one-day conference to present findings.

How Courts Use Open-Source Methods to Gather Evidence of War Crimes and Pursue Prosecution

Matrix Project Team (Two Semesters)

Human rights investigations increasingly rely upon open-source intelligence (OSINT) to identify, document, and verify human rights atrocities. These open sources—such as publicly available Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and tweets—provide important information about human rights violations and perpetrators. However, analyzing, verifying, and corroborating these sources to support legal accountability is time-consuming and requires expertise. Additionally, there is currently no international standard for using open-source investigations for legal accountability. This Matrix Project Team will bring together scholars from the Human Right Center at UC Berkeley—representing the field of law, as well as journalism, public policy, and public health—to develop a white paper on how courts have successfully used open-source to improve the outcomes of their cases. This paper will be circulated at an international conference where OSINT experts and court investigators who are interested in adapting open-source methods to the legal field will discuss and develop standards to ensure court admissibility.

Berkeley Infrastructure Initiative: Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Policy Research in the Public Interest

Matrix Project Team (Two Semesters)

Co-sponsored by Matrix and Global Metropolitan Studies (GMS), a Matrix-affiliated center, this Project Team aspires to lay the foundations for a “Berkeley Infrastructure Initiative” (BI2) that will bring together faculty and students with a shared interest in the planning, governance, finance, design, development, economics, and environmental effects of infrastructure. “Widespread social benefit will only be realized if infrastructure investments are planned in a manner prioritizing equitable access and reducing externalities that place disproportionate burdens on already disadvantaged groups,” the organizers explained in their proposal. “Thus, objective, empirically-guided knowledge is needed on how to equitably provide and effectively deliver infrastructure services. Our team will incorporate a strong equity lens into our empirical work.” The team’s members aim to develop a “landscape framing paper” outlining the state of the field and research needs, and they will also convene a conference with leading scholars and develop a strategic plan to seek extramural and campus funding support. “Through these efforts, UC Berkeley will be well-positioned to have significant impact in scholarship and practice,” they write.

Continent Divided: Building Bridges, Finding Truth

Project Team/Continuing Theme Team

European nations continue to struggle to provide a unified front in the face of mounting political division, socioeconomic upheaval, the political repercussions of Brexit, and the rise of a pan-European Populist Right. Continuing the work of a Theme Team from last year, this Matrix team will take a holistic approach to questions concerning the interconnected nature of immigration and polarization both in Europe and abroad, taking specific aim at the implications of the trending issue of so-called “fake news.” The results of recent political elections have made painfully clear the volatile repercussions of the dissemination of “fake news” and a general trend towards more politicized, target-oriented journalism. But the aftershock of “fake news” has lasting effect on the way we come to envision the world around us: dramatically shifting the direction of transatlantic relationships, and manipulating our understanding of domestic and foreign politics alike. They will ask: how might the study of diverse disciplines—from new media studies to political history—help establish coping mechanisms for renegotiating the value of facts in an increasingly post-truth discursive atmosphere? How can academics contribute to popular opinion in the face of hostile factionalization? What is the line between academia and activism? Where can we find room for compromise, and where must we, too, draw lines along ideological boundaries?

Demystifying the Black Box of Computational Text Analysis Workflows: From Static Textual Archives to Visualizations and Reports of U.S. Congressional Activity

Matrix Theme Team

This year’s Matrix Theme Team will apply data-gathering methods to the Congressional Record and other texts, while also developing a guide for how scholars across disciplines can harness the power of computational text analysis. “Computational text analysis workflows are long and complex,” the team’s organizers explained in their proposal. “Too few scholars know how to evaluate critically the multiple decisions a researcher might make…in preparing, processing, and analyzing data; fewer still know how to carry their own research through such workflows. Our team will make this whole process transparent and understandable, by designing and documenting a complete workflow.” The team will use digital scans of the Congressional Record to model the process of textual data acquisition, cleaning, chunking, databasing, analysis, and visualization, which characterize the research process from beginning to end. At the same time, they will “produce a research-ready database enabling a wave of scholarship into the behavior of the U.S. Congress.”

Grants and Opportunities

Matrix Welcomes 2016-2017 Dissertation Fellows

Published October 10, 2016

Social Science Matrix is honored to welcome our inaugural group of Matrix Dissertation Fellows, five Ph.D. students whose research has strong potential to generate effective solutions to critical global challenges.

Social Science Matrix is honored to welcome our inaugural group of Matrix Dissertation Fellows. These five Ph.D. candidates—Robert Connell, Joshua Kalla, Zachary Levenson, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, and Jennifer Smith—were chosen from nominations submitted by social science departments in Barrows Hall. Fellows receive up to $1000 in research funds and a work space in the Matrix office, where they will work alongside other fellows and staff members, Matrix-affiliated faculty, and visiting scholars, while having opportunities to participate in a wide range of Social Science Matrix-sponsored activities.

“We created the Matrix Dissertation Fellows program to support transformative social science research,” says Lynsay Skiba, Associate Director for Programs at Matrix. “Our 2016-2017 class of fellows embody this mission, demonstrating strong potential to develop effective solutions to critical global challenges, from urban policy and political engagement to preserving cultural identity and protecting the economic interests of communities.”

The five fellows’ dissertations include an examination of how “Maroon” communities in Jamaica and Suriname are working to retain sovereignty in the face of economic and political pressure; an analysis of urban resettlement policies in post-Apartheid South Africa; an inquiry into how religious institutions influence political opinion and activity in the United States; an exploration of evolving narratives and identities among people from the archipelago-nation of Tonga; and an analysis of how the concepts of “native” and “nature” inform land-claims settlements in Alaska and other regions. Following are more detailed summaries of the research of the 2016-2017 Matrix Dissertation Fellows.

Robert Connell

“Maroon communities” were established by escaped slaves in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Although a ubiquitous form of resistance, only a few of these communities were able to survive against the odds and successfully establish autonomous governance structures within the borders of sovereign states.

Yet in Jamaica and Suriname, the hard-fought autonomy of Maroon societies has been put to the test in recent decades, as these communities have come under pressure to allow global mining companies to mine bauxite, a mineral used for the production of aluminum.

Robert Connell’s dissertation, “The Political Ecology of Maroon Sovereignty: Bauxite Mining and Political Change in 21st Century Jamaica and Suriname,” investigates how the governance structures, political alliances, and developmental aspirations of Maroon communities have transformed over the last 50 years, particularly as they have battled with the state over land rights—and have had to manage the dire ecological risks presented by extractive industries.

Connell’s research stands as the first systematic comparison of these two Maroon societies in the contemporary period and, given the relative dearth of research on the development of Maroon polities in the post-abolition period, his dissertation fills a major gap in the literature, while also contributing unique knowledge to African diaspora studies. His work tackles a wide range of important issues, including environmental politics and philosophy, ethnic multiplicity in the African diaspora, minority rights, threats to peace and security, socio-economic development in periphery countries, the politics of autonomy, and the fracturing of national unity in the Caribbean.

“For David Harvey, ‘new knowledge arises out of taking radically different conceptual blocs, rubbing them together, and making revolutionary fire’,” Connell says. “I believe this maxim captures succinctly the vast potential of interdisciplinary scholarship for advanced knowledge production. As such, Social Science Matrix stands as a vital addition to UC Berkeley’s intellectual community and I am pleased to be a part of this dynamic institution.”

Joshua Kalla

A Ph.D. candidate in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, Josh Kalla studies American political behavior. His research focuses primarily on the use of randomized field experiments—conducted in cooperation with politicians, campaigns, and NGOs—to study the causal effect of interactions between citizens, politicians, and campaigns on voter engagement, political participation, and opinion change.

His research has been published in Science and the American Journal of Political Science and has been covered by the New York Times, This American Life, and other outlets.

Kalla made headlines when he and his colleague, David Broockman, Assistant Professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, exposed that fraudulent data had been used in a study showing that gay canvassers who shared their stories with straight voters could convince them to support marriage equality. (Ironically, Kalla and Broockman have since published new research showing that a single 10-minute conversation can help reduce anti-transgender prejudice for at least three months.)

Kalla’s dissertation research focuses on the role of religious institutions in influencing individual citizens’ decisions to participate in politics beyond just voting. Using a mixed-methods approach of surveys, in-depth interviews, and randomized field experiment, Kalla’s research is exploring why some religious institutions are more politicized than others and what effect belonging to a politically engaged religious institution has on individual congregants’ political views and activities.

“Being a Matrix Fellow is incredibly useful to my research,” Kalla says. “Matrix has provided a beautiful space and a supportive community to think, research, and write.”

Zachary Levenson

A Ph.D. candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, Zachary Levenson spent 15 months living in Mitchell’s Plain, the second largest township in Cape Town, South Africa, to research his dissertation, “The Post-Apartheid State: The Politics of Housing in South Africa.” He examines how South Africa responded to the unprecedented proliferation of informal housing following democratization.

Since 1994, the South African state has delivered more free, single-family homes than any other democracy in modern history, he says, yet during the same two decades, the number of informal settlements has grown more than nine-fold. The nation’s expanding welfare state failed to keep pace with the rate of post-apartheid urbanization. As demand overwhelmed supply, inadequately housed residents organized mass land occupations as a means of hailing the post-apartheid state.

In some cases, residents of these informal settlements were evicted; in others, they were not. Through a careful study of eviction targeting—based on observation, interviews, and research on three mass land occupations—Levenson demonstrates how residents’ own political organizations shaped the outcome of municipal urban policies.

“Whereas previous scholarship takes ‘communities’ that receive state-provisioned housing as ready-to-hand, I argue that it is precisely this status as a community that is variable,” he writes. “In cases where residents organize a coherent, legible representative organization prior to approaching the local state, their land occupations achieve the right to stay put; but in cases where they approach the state before consolidating a single representative body, eviction is the most likely outcome.”

In bringing the insights of political sociology to bear upon urban studies, Levenson breaks with the prevailing explanation that evictions are most likely in sites planned for development and are driven solely by the profit motive. Instead, he finds that the most visible and centrally located land occupation secured official toleration from the municipality. By contrast, the two land occupations that were evicted failed to consolidate any coherent representative body. Instead, faction leaders approached outside organizations (the local state, NGOs, and political parties), facilitating the division of the settlement.

These findings challenge our prevailing understandings of how local states work and how welfare states operate. Above all, they demonstrate that poor residents are just like anyone else: they may be organized in communities or as populations, or they may live as atomized individuals. Levenson’s research challenges the tendency, both colloquial and academic, to refer to “poor communities” in South Africa, in the US, and in the world.

“Being a Dissertation Fellow at the Social Science Matrix provides an interdisciplinary window into the social sciences, allowing me to write in constant conversation with colleagues from related but separate fields,” Levenson says. “It provides an encouraging atmosphere for writing regularly, and allows me to remain in dialogue with colleagues from across the social sciences and humanities.”

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu

For her dissertation, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies, is drawing upon a variety of sources to “unravel some of the definitive and colonial narratives that have historically defined Tonganness,” she explains, “by tracing the contemporary legacies of these narratives on the bodies of Tongan people, Fonua/land and Moana/ocean—and most significantly, on Tongan psyche and spirituality. I begin by looking at the narratives of my family and I begin by opening up the wound.”

A native of Tonga, an archipelago in the Polynesian region of the Pacific, Niumeitolu researches how the concept of “Tonganness” has been “produced through colonial institutions of race, gender, sexualities, and global economic exigencies.” Specifically, she examines how modern Tongan identity has been shaped by the colonial processes that began with “the desecration of the Sacred, including the criminalization and ‘othering’ of indigenous Tongan cosmologies; the loss of Tongan women’s mana/power that transpires through the implementation of new legal and cultural laws legislating violence as a methodology for producing the boundaries of ‘Tongan domesticity’; and lastly, the subsequent legitimation of discourses of violence against Tongan women and/or desecration of the ‘feminine’ that also includes Fonua/land and Moana/ocean.”

Her dissertation draws upon a range of narratives, including that of the Tongan female God, Hikule’o, whose “mana is appropriated and silenced by Western religions and the new Tongan elite to satisfy contemporary colonial discourses of ‘Tongan domesticity’ constituted through the new rules of race, gender, and sexualities.” She also examines popular national narratives of Tonga’s beloved King Taufa’ahau Tupou 1, who ruled Tonga during the 19th century, and she traces the political legacy of Captain James Cook’s historical naming of Tonga as “The Friendly Islands” in the 18th century.

At the same time, Niumeitolu’s project integrates the narratives of her own family, including her father’s experiences in an Australian Boarding School at six years old—and the tumultuous legacies of this history that led him on a path of addictions, alcoholism, and violence, as well as how that shaped her childhood in Tonga and in the U.S. Niumeitolu also explores the narratives of Tongan women in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to the largest Tongan population outside of Tonga, and their collaboration with Ohlone, indigenous peoples of the Bay Area, to remember and honor Ohlone sacred ancestors. “This work includes the protection of Ohlone sacred sites against contemporary development and desecration,” Niumeitolu explains. She describes this collaboration with the Ohlone as “a journey of political solidarity and ceremony, central for our Tongan paths towards healing and decolonization.”

Ultimately, Niumeitolu seeks to peel back some of the “layers of historical trauma and the irreparable and innumerable losses that are the legacy of Western colonialisms in Tonga from the 18th century to contemporary 21st century life here in the U.S. diaspora”. Moreover, she “intends to center and give voice to indigenous Tongan cosmologies, methodologies and epistemologies that are at the center of our Tongan survival and resistance.”

“I’m very grateful to Matrix for including me in this very prestigious program, and I want to sincerely thank them for respecting and taking my work on Tongan communities and Pacific Islander Studies seriously,” Niumeitolu says. “Often in U.S. academia, Tongan Studies and Pacific Islander Studies are marginalized, but the staff and faculty at Matrix have welcomed me and my work. I am touched and grateful for this support, because it is hard to find.”

Jennifer Smith

Jennifer Smith is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Ethnic Studies. In her dissertation work, she investigates the co-constitution of “nature” and “native”, and how these categories and their genealogies inform land-claims settlements, particularly in Northern spaces.

As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work is at the intersections of critical geography, law, literature, and Native American Studies. Jen’s work considers how indigenous communities of Alaska practice multiple self-determinations when intersected by a triad of settler technologies: a national desire for fossil fuels, an environmental desire to experience the “last frontier”, as well as a burgeoning global understanding of Arctic land and indigenous Arctic peoples as litmus test for climate change.

Jen completed her undergraduate degree in English with an emphasis in Literature and the Environment at the University of Alaska Southeast, and she received her master’s degree in Comparative Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. She is a recipient of the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship, an awardee of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and a Graduate Fellow with the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues and Institute for the Study of Societal Issues.

“It is a privilege to be included in the vibrant community of scholars and thinkers that the Social Science Matrix fosters and supports,” Smith says.

For more information about the Matrix Dissertation Fellows program and other funding opportunities, as well as upcoming events and news, please subscribe to the Matrix newsletter through the form at the bottom of our home page.