New Directions
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Event Date: March 10th, 2026
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT
New Directions: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Perspectives
Colonial legacies continue to shape political, social, and intellectual life. While colonialism is often treated as a historical period, its structures and logics persist in contemporary debates around race, territory, knowledge, and power. This panel — part of the Social Science Matrix New Directions series — will bring together UC Berkeley graduate students from anthropology, geography, and sociology to examine how colonial histories are reproduced, contested, and reimagined across different contexts.
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Faculty Fellows
Published April 15, 2023
2023-2024 Social Science Matrix Faculty Fellows Chosen
Four UC Berkeley professors have been selected to be Matrix Faculty Fellows for the 2023-2024 academic year: Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History; Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Anthropology; Christopher Muller, Associate Professor of Sociology; and Aarti Sethi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published March 21, 2023
To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua
Recorded on March 7, 2023, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on "To Defend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Activism and the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua," by Courtney Desiree Morris, Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Morris was joined in conversation by Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies. The panel was moderated by Lok Siu, Chair of the Asian American Research Center and Professor of Ethnic Studies and Asian American/Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley.
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Recap
Published March 21, 2023
Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America
Watch a video (or listen to the podcast) of an Authors Meet Critics book panel focused on "Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America," by Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Professor Herman was joined in conversation by Julio Moreno, Professor of History at the University of San Francisco, and José Juan Pérez Meléndez, Assistant Professor in Latin American and Caribbean History at UC Davis, and a Bridging the Divides Fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in Hunter College. Elena Schneider, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History, moderated.
Learn More >Matrix Lecture
Recap
Published March 1, 2023
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar: Reimagining Global Integration
Recorded on February 15, 2023, this Matrix Distinguished Lecture featured Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, presenting a talk entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, Justice Cuéllar served two U.S. presidents at the White House and in federal agencies, and was a faculty member at Stanford University for two decades. Watch a video of the lecture — or listen to the recording.
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Recap
Published February 18, 2023
Citrin Award Lecture: “Does Political Propaganda Work,” Donald P. Green
Recorded on February 10, 2023, this video features the 2022 Citrin Award Lecture, presented by Donald P. Green, J.W. Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Professor Green's lecture, "Does Political Propaganda Work?", was presented by the Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research at UC Berkeley.
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Interview
Published February 14, 2023
The Scandal of Access: An Interview with Zahra Hayat
Listen to an episode of the Matrix Podcast featuring Zahra Hayat, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, who obtained her PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Hayat about her research on pharmaceutical access in the global South, particularly in Pakistan, and the regimes of price and property on which such access is contingent.
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