Marion Fourcade has stepped down as Director of Social Science Matrix following a highly successful six-year term. Below is a letter she sent to members of the UC Berkeley Social Sciences Division.
Dear friends and colleagues,
I am writing to share some news. This summer, I will be stepping down as faculty director of the Social Science Matrix and welcoming Anthropology Professor Cori Hayden into the role.
I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve as Matrix’s faculty director for the last seven years and to work alongside so many extraordinary colleagues, students, staff and partners. Together, we have made Matrix a vital center for interdisciplinary research and public engagement — supporting innovative scholarship, fostering collaboration across fields and connecting academic inquiry to the issues that shape everyday life.
I am deeply proud of what we have accomplished: bringing Berkeley social scientists into broader conversation; platforming new faculty books and emerging research by graduate students; and directing collective attention toward some of the most urgent questions facing the world today.
I will especially remember a swiftly assembled panel on the war in Ukraine, convened within days of the invasion; over capacity discussions of Linguistics Professor Andrew Garrett’s The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall and Sociology Professor Areej Sabbagh-Khoury’s Colonizing Palestine; arresting “new directions” panels featuring graduate students’ research on fringe politics or the changing U.S.-Mexico border; 18 months of amazing online events that brought researchers from around the world virtually to Berkeley during the Covid-19 pandemic; a formerly incarcerated Berkeley alumnus bearing witness to the labor of firefighting; the trenchant eloquence of Matrix Distinguished Lecturer Orlando Patterson on the historical sociology of evil; and so, so much more.
I am grateful that Cori has agreed to be the next Matrix faculty director. A creative thinker whose work spans the anthropology of the biochemical sciences, global pharmaceutical politics, crowds, and the post-liberal politics of knowledge, she knows Matrix well, having served a brilliant term as interim director in Spring 2024. Cori’s intellectual range, natural charisma and boundless energy make her precisely the right person for drawing people and ideas together across disciplines. Matrix could not be in better hands.
As for myself, I am happily returning to teaching and to my research on the ever-fascinating remaking of the world by the tech industry. But I will be around — and I’m very much looking forward to remaining engaged with Matrix as a faculty member and participant in its many programs and conversations.
My deepest thanks go to the Matrix staff, and to the faculty, students, visiting scholars, supporters and members of the community who have made these seven years so rich and rewarding, and who showed up for insightful discussions and made the work matter.
Cori begins her term as faculty director on July 1. Please join me in welcoming her to Matrix!
With gratitude,
Marion
Marion Fourcade
Professor of Sociology and Matrix Faculty Director
Social Science Matrix
