UC Berkeley’s flagship institute for social science research

Our purpose is captured in our name: we provide an organizational framework—a “matrix”—that supports cross-disciplinary research pursued by social scientists across the University of California, Berkeley campus and beyond.

Matrix On Point

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Event Date: April 25th, 2025
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

Governing Giants: Law, Politics, and Antitrust

This panel will bring together scholars of political science, economics, and law to discuss new challenges in competition policy, the domestic and international dimensions of antitrust policy, and the economic, political, and social considerations that shape antitrust policy and enforcement. Moderated by Matrix Faculty Fellow Ryan Brutger (UC Berkeley, Political Science), the panel will feature Amy Pond (Washington University St. Louis, Political Science), Prasad Krishnamurthy (UC Berkeley, Law), and Michael Allen (Stanford, Political Science).

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Matrix News

Research Teams

Published August 17, 2022

Matrix Announces Research Teams for 2022-2023

Social Science Matrix has selected six new Matrix Research Teams for the 2022-2023 academic year. Matrix Research Teams are groups of scholars who gather regularly to explore or develop a novel question or emerging field in the social sciences. This year’s funded teams — three faculty-led teams and three student-led teams — were chosen following review by a cross-disciplinary panel of faculty members.

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Podcast

Interview

Published August 10, 2022

Institutionalizing Child Welfare: An Interview with Matty Lichtenstein

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Matty Lichtenstein, a recent PhD from Berkeley’s Sociology Department, who studies how state and professional organizations shape social and health inequalities in maternal and child welfare. The interview focuses on Lichtenstein's research on the transformation of American child welfare and the impact of that transformation on contemporary maternal and infant health practices.

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Matrix News

Faculty Fellows

Published August 10, 2022

Four Professors Chosen as 2022-2023 Matrix Faculty Fellows

Four UC Berkeley professors have been selected to be the inaugural Matrix Faculty Fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year: Gašper Beguš, Assistant Professor of Linguistics; Puck Engman, Assistant Professor of History; Ethan Katz, Associate Professor of History; and Salar Mameni, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies.

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Article

Podcast

Published August 3, 2022

Race, Gender, and Political Speech: An Interview with Gabriella Licata

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was insulted on the Capitol steps in July 2020, it was a brief media sensation. But what does being called an “effing bitch” mean for how we think about political speech? This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Gabriella Licata, a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, focused on how the standard language ideologies of political speech come to shape perceptions of language and people in Congress.

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Article

Interview

Published June 17, 2022

How CRISPR Became Routine

Read a Matrix visual interview with Santiago Molina, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, who researches how CRISPR, the genetic engineering technology, has become an everyday part of scientific practice.

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News

Iris Hui Memorial

Published May 26, 2022

Iris Hui Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship Winners

Two UC Berkeley social science graduate students have been selected as the inaugural recipients of the Iris Hui Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship. Joseph Greenbaum, a PhD student in the Department of Political Science; and Gisselle Perez-Leon, a PhD candidate in the Department of History, will each receive a stipend to support their research for the 2022-2023 academic year.

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