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 Lecture

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Event Date: December 4th, 2025
4:00pm-5:30pm

Alexis Madrigal: “To Know a Place”

In this Matrix Distinguished Lecture, journalist Alexis Madrigal — host of KQED's Forum and a contributing writer at The Atlantic — turns his attention to the question of how we come to know a place. Drawing on his background as a reporter, writer, and thinker of cities, landscapes, and histories, he will explore different ways of writing about and understanding place, revealing how perspective, memory, and narrative inform the stories we tell about the world around us.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published August 4, 2014

The Happy App

Tchiki Davis, a Berkeley social psychology Ph.D. candidate, is building an app to boost happiness.

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Workshop/Symposium

Published August 4, 2014

Dangerous Knowledge

An interdisciplinary working group at UC Berkeley aims to better understand how breakthrough scientific discoveries have been—and should be—regulated.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published August 4, 2014

Playing with Kids Pays Off Economically

A groundbreaking study by UC Berkeley researchers shows that playing with children has a profound impact on their future incomes.  

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Interview

Published August 1, 2014

Reconstructing Disaster

UC Berkeley graduate student Siri Colom researches how politics shaped the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published August 1, 2014

If Then What?

A Social Science Matrix seminar is examining the creeping presence of algorithms in modern society.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published August 1, 2014

Seeking New Models for Clinical Medicine

A new Social Science Matrix seminar is focused on finding radical new approaches to clinical health care.

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