Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published October 23, 2025
Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence
Watch (or listen to) the recording of our recent Authors Meet Critics panel on "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence," by Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, a book that interrogates the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery. Professor Douglass was joined in conversation by Salar Mameni and Henry Washington, Jr., with Courtney Desiree Morris moderating.
Learn More >CRELS
Recap
Published October 21, 2025
Legitimation by (Mis)identification: Credit, Discrimination, and The Racial Epistemology of Algorithmic Expansion
Recorded on September 22, 2025, this video features a talk by Davon Norris, Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) and Faculty Associate at the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics at the University of Michigan. Professor Norris’s research is broadly oriented to understanding how our ways of determining what is valuable informs patterns of inequality with an acute focus on racism and racial inequality.
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published May 20, 2025
150 Years of Border Control: The Legacy of the 1875 Page Act
Recorded on April 23, 2025, this panel marked the 150th anniversary of the Page Act of 1875, one of the first federal laws to restrict immigration to the United States — especially Asian immigration, as the law prohibited the importation of Asian contract workers, prostitutes (a provision targeted against Chinese women), and criminals.
Learn More >Matrix News
Iris Hui Memorial Fund
Published May 19, 2025
Ethnic Studies PhD Student Receives Iris Hui Memorial Scholarship
Irene Franco Rubio, a doctoral student in the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, has been selected to receive the 2025 Dr. Iris Hui Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship. Irene is a first-generation scholar-activist whose research explores multiracial coalition-building, grassroots resistance, and social movement histories in the U.S. Southwest.
Learn More >CRELS
Recap
Published April 23, 2025
Alex Roehrkasse: The New Contours of Mass Incarceration
Recorded on March 18, 2025, this video features a talk by Alexander F. Roehrkasse, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. In the talk, Roehrkasse presents new evidence of declining Black–White inequality and skyrocketing educational inequality in U.S. prison admissions.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published April 1, 2025
Social, Spatial, Ecological, and Racial Fixes in New Deal South Carolina: Interview with Morgan Vickers
This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Morgan P. Vickers, an Assistant Professor of Race/Racialization in the Department of Law, Societies & Justice at the University of Washington. Vickers received their Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published December 16, 2024
Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States
This Authors Meet Critics panel focused on "Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States," by Stephanie L. Canizales, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. With Kristina Lovato, Caitlin Patler, and Sarah Song.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published December 4, 2024
Emotion, Race, and Gender: Interview with Gold Okafor
Listen to our interview with Gold Okafor, a PhD candidate in social and personality psychology at UC Berkeley who investigates racial and gender disparities through emotion. The interview focuses on Okafor's paper, "Measuring Mindfulness in Black Americans: A Psychometric Validation of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire," as well as other research topics.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published September 27, 2024
Prisoner Labor Legacies: An interview with Elizabeth Hargrett and Xander Lenc
While recent news has highlighted how prisoners have fought wildfires, prison labor is not a new phenomenon. Although incarcerated people have built highways, dams, and buildings, their contributions to American infrastructure are often made invisible. Both Elizabeth Hargrett and Xander Lenc have studied how prisoner labor has shaped America’s infrastructure with a focus on North […]
Learn More >Article
Interview
Published July 22, 2024
K-Beauty in War: A Visual Interview with Claire Chun
Read our interview with Claire Chun, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, whose research explores how modern conceptualizations of “Korean” and “Asian” beauty, wellness, and aesthetics are shaped by overlapping forces of U.S. militarism, tourism, and humanitarianism.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published May 1, 2024
Sugar and the Transformation of the American West: An Interview with Bernadette Pérez
For this episode of the Matrix Podcast, J.T. Jamieson, a 2022-2023 Matrix Communications Scholar, interviewed Bernadette Pérez, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Pérez is a historian of the United States and specializes in the histories of Latinx and Indigenous peoples in the West. Her current research focuses on migrant sugar beet workers in Colorado, and explores intersections between race, environment, labor, migration, and colonialism in the post Civil War.
Learn More >Lecture
Recap
Published March 3, 2024
Understanding Land-based Psychological Trauma in Light of Epistemic Justice
Recorded on February 8, 2024, this video features a lecture by Dr. Garret Barnwell, South African clinical psychologist and community psychology practitioner. The talk was moderated and coordinated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Listen to the talk as a podcast through the player below, or on Google […]
Learn More >