This Matrix Prospecting Team will apply modern methodologies to tackle 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 […]
Research Team
Working, Learning, and Earning in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Considering the Implications of Computation Intensive Automation, Big Data, and Platforms
Bringing together scholars from engineering, business, and other domains, 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 […]
Research Team
Expert Language, Native Language: Toward a Framework for Translation in Clinical (Mis)communication
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 between doctors and patients. “Our project explores challenges in clinical communication, analyzing conversations between patients and physicians via the lens of linguistics and […]
Research Team
Matrix-Sciences Po Collaboration Grants
UC Berkeley’s Social Science Matrix and Sciences Po, a premier university based in Paris, France, have a established a program to provide 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 […]
Research Team
Assembling Critical Theory and Practices in Design and the Social Sciences
The social sciences have long been interested in the processes and products of art, media, and design, exploring how material objects and media infrastructure are shaped by and give rise to cultural norms, historical values, and social systems. Design shapes our daily lives through the technologies, infrastructures, and artifacts around us. The processes and implications […]
Research Team
The Future of the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences PhD at Berkeley
Led by Anthony Cascardi, Dean of Arts and Humanities at UC Berkeley, and Claudia von Vacano, Executive Director of D-Lab and the Digital Humanities, this Matrix project team aims to examine the current professional relevance of liberal arts doctoral preparation at Berkeley. The reason: PhD training in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has strained […]
Research Team
Resilience and Transcommunity Knowledge-Sharing in Agroecosystems at the Base of the Himalaya
Disaster events and environmental shocks disproportionately affect rural and poor populations. The Nepali Himalayas are a particularly vulnerable hotspot, as earthquakes are common and more than 80% of the rural population is dependent on agriculture and home-produced food. Drawing upon field research conducted in Nepal, this Matrix research team is working with local communities and […]
Research Team
Network on Adolescent Well-being and Development (NAWD)
The dominant approach to adolescent health is organized around specific problems such as pregnancy, sexually-transmitted infections, or violence, lacking an integrative development lens and sufficient attention to how contexts—families, schools, neighborhoods, and beyond—shape health and behavior. In response to the need for integrative approaches, developmentally-informed scientists across disciplines are now seeking to identify innovative approaches […]
Research Team
Rethinking Identity and Linguistic Diversity in an Age of Immigration
In what ways does the process of immigration enable or constrain the transformation and preservation of language and identity? This question is at the heart of an interdisciplinary Matrix Research Team focused on investigating the dynamic interaction between language, identity, and immigration. "Today we’re witnessing an increased movement of people, their languages, values, ideas and […]
Research Team
Political Economy and Society Curriculum Working Group
With approximately 450 students per year, the field of Political Economy (POLECON) is the largest of the interdisciplinary majors within UC Berkeley’s International and Area Studies Teaching Program (IASTP). This major has served several generations of Cal students exceptionally well, and has grown accordingly, while helping fill in some of the campus’s unsatisfied student (and […]
Research Team
Coordinated Learning Opportunities around Geospatial Information, Analysis, and Technologies
The rise of geospatial technologies has transformed the idea of "place" in social science research. At UC Berkeley, multiple units and programs provide instruction in methods and technologies for working with geospatial data. Yet until now, there has been little alignment and collaboration among these different divisions. To address this challenge, Social Science Matrix is […]
Research Team
Questioning the Evidence on the Integration of Immigrants in Europe
A wide array of data types are employed to support different narratives about the integration or non-integration of European populations, including data related to educational and professional outcomes, marriage and domestic life, participation in civil society, religious observance, criminal or terrorist behavior, and national allegiance. This Matrix theme team, led by Led by Jeroen Dewulf, […]