Author Archives: Colleen Stone

April 24, 2020 | STS Approaches to COVID-19: A Roundtable Discussion

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Friday, April 24, 2020

11:00am–12:30pm PST

A livestream conversation of STS approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, moderated by Saul Halfon, Virginia Tech Department of Science, Technology, and Society.

This roundtable brings together scholars from a range of STS specializations (cultural studies, sociology, history, politics, policy, and anthropology) to help us think through the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics will range freely across cultures of expertise, institutional trust & distrust, big data and modeling, drug development and regulatory practice, health security politics, health disparities, pandemic preparedness, health and supply infrastructures, and more. This will be an informal exchange of scholars, and we invite you to join us.

This event was recorded and streamed live on the VT STS Facebook page.

Participants

Jenny Reardon (UCSC, Sociology and the Science & Justice Research Center)

Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter, Philosophy and History of Science)

Rebecca Hester (Virginia Tech, STS)

Arthur Daemmrich (Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation)

asynchronous video appearance by Carlo Caduff (Kings College London, Global Health & Social Medicine)

Saul Halfon (Virginia Tech, STS) served as Moderator

April 20, 2020 | Book Launch! Vital Decomposition Soil Practitioners and Life Politics

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Vital Decomposition (Duke University Press, 2020)

Monday, April 20, 2020

1:30 pm PST / 4:30pm EST

online: https://sasupenn.zoom.us/j/767737043

 

Celebrate the launch of Kristina Lyons’ new book, Vital Decomposition Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke University Press, April 2020).

Kristina M. Lyons is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

structure of COVID-19

SJRC Response to COVID-19

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COVID-19: The Pandemicene

Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, UC Santa Cruz, like many other higher education institutions, announced the suspension of in-person instruction, lectures and discussion sections through the full spring quarter, including all labs, studios, field research, and field study courses.

Now, with many communities ordered to stay-in-place, with only essential business allowed to operate, we find ourselves in the midst of a historic remaking of our entangled worlds. Science & Justice will be in real time working with our friends and colleagues around the world to make sense of and respond to this moment, the pandemicene.

How do we do science and justice remotely? Re-learn.

The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Undergraduate Curriculum & Training

The SJRC will gather several undergraduate researchers to focus current Center research projects on the following emerging areas in the context of COVID-19:

  • Re-Worlding: Living and Learning Alone Together in the Pandemicene
  • Community, Civil Society and Social Justice Responses to COVID-19
  • Just Biomedicine in an Age of COVID-19:  How Can Researchers (Public Health, Genomics, Virologists, Bioethicists) Collaborate in New Ways?
  • The Challenges of Knowing and Responding in the Age of No Data and Mis-information
  • The Crisis of Public Health in Infrastructures of Care and Incarceration

Read more on these developing areas of concern in the campus news article, “Discrimination, governance, and trust in the age of COVID-19”, featuring SJRC Director Jenny Reardon.

Additionally, several courses have been designed to be offered in Spring 2020.

Founding Director Jenny Reardon has designed an undergraduate independent study seminar SOCY 194: Living and Learning in a Pandemic: The Sociology of COVID-19, that will draw upon insights from the Sociology of Medicine, Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Studies and Critical Race Theory to study the current pandemic, COVID-19.

Sociology Assistant Professor Rebecca London has designed an undergraduate course, SOCY 139T-02: Coronavirus and community: Sociological research on impacts and responses to the pandemic, that will center around a call for papers from Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public.

Graduate Training Program

In Winter 2020, the SJRC celebrated the Science & Justice Training Program’s 10th anniversary. As the accessibility of the university is being utterly transformed, we want to ask: how can what the COVID-19 public health crisis makes visible help us to rebuild a different university in the wake of this pandemicene? Meet our new cohort of fellows and learn more about their projects.

Developing Blogs & Calls To Action

The SJRC aims to make visible the many themes and calls to action that will emerge. SJRC affiliate faculty, undergraduate and graduate student researchers may contribute towards our developing blogs or use the platform to post their own writings for public consumption. Students of the SOCY 194 course and SJRC interns are developing an online zine. Calls will be shared and archived in the Center’s News Feed and on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.

Contact Founding Director Jenny Reardon (readon1@ucsc.edu) to get involved.

The Pandemicene Project: Re-Worlding Toward Justice

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How do we create knowledge that orients us towards justice at this critical historical juncture, in the middle of a viral pandemic, and a pandemic of social inequality and racial discrimination that has sparked global unrest? The Pandemicene Project begins from the premise that creating trust-worthy knowledge that can foster a more just world requires attending to both COVID-19 pandemic and the deep inequalities and fissures in the polity that this pandemic has laid bare. It also requires attending both to what is going on locally (e.g., from the shelter-in-place locations of our students), while drawing on the power and insights of global networks. In this project, UCSC faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduates students have worked together to interview members of their communities and the Science & Justice network about scholarly and activist responses to this critical historical moment.  The project has produced a podcast series for our local radio station (KZSC 88.1 FM), and expanded the blog series on the SJRC website. Ultimately, through engaging our communities—both locally and globally—we aim to produce knowledge that can help all of us – scholars and scientists, students and activists – imagine and enact just futures both in our home state of California and in our communities worldwide.

The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.

The SJRC will focus current research projects on the following emerging areas in the context of COVID-19:

  • Re-Worlding: Living and Learning Alone Together in the Pandemicene
  • Community, Civil Society and Social Justice Responses to COVID-19
  • Just Biomedicine in an Age of COVID-19:  How Can Researchers (Public Health, Genomics, Virologists, Bioethicists) Collaborate in New Ways?
  • The Challenges of Knowing and Responding in the Age of No Data and Mis-information
  • The Crisis of Public Health in Infrastructures of Care and Incarceration

Read more on these developing areas of concern in the campus news article, “Discrimination, governance, and trust in the age of COVID-19”, featuring SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon; in the special issue of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers featuring S&J Advisor and Politics Professor Matt Sparke’s article, “Contextualizing Coronavirus Geographically,” provides additional articles and perspectives on the pandemic; and in the Daily Beast Interview, featuring James Doucet-Battle, assistant professor of sociology and interim director of SJRC on the glaring race problems COVID-19 vaccine trials have.

If you would like to take part in or contribute to this project, email Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) and/or Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Faculty

Jenny Reardon (Sociology)

Graduate Researchers

Dennis Browe (Sociology)

Paloma Medina (Biomolecular Engineering)

Dorothy Santos (Film & Digital Media)

Lucia Vitale (Politics)

Undergraduate Researchers

Kathia Damian (Literature, Talk and News Director KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM)

Gina Barba (Community Studies)

Isa Ansari (Sociology)

Maryam Nazir (Philosophy)

Teresa (Tee) Wicks

Announcing 2020-2021 SJTP Fellows

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Started in 2010 with a grant from the National Science Foundation, the Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) celebrates its 10th anniversary and welcomes a new cohort!

Now more than ever the SJTP provides critical skills for addressing problems of our times, whether ecological destruction, growing inequalities, or a global pandemic. These are problems that span disciplines and areas of practice, and the SJTP provides the space for transdisciplinary thought and collaboration needed to respond to them. It is creating the next generation of path-breaking researchers who have the tools needed to place justice at the heart of our best science and technology. Read about their innovations as reported in the Danish Daily Information and Le Monde.

Offered Winter 2020 as BME/FMST/SOCY 268A and ANTH 267A, the Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration, the introductory seminar of the SJTP brought early career science and engineering students together with social science, humanities and arts students to foster experimental collaborative research practices.

We are proud to welcome the newest cohort of graduate students to the SJTP as Fellows this Spring 2020, joining us for our 10th anniversary, are Colette Felton, Jonas Oppenheimer, and Jennifer Pensky! Learn more about them below.

In addition to working with SJRC affiliated faculty, Fellows connect with SJRC’s network of local, regional, and international partners to inform projects that explore how questions of science and knowledge meet questions of ethics and justice. Fellows gain access to funding for projects and events, mentorship and training, and experience designing innovative collaborative transdisciplinary research and public dialogues.

MEET the FELLOWS

Colette Felton is a first-year member of Professor Angela Brooks’ Lab in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics. Colette is working on analyzing long-read transcriptomics, especially in identifying and visualizing gene fusions. Colette’s SJTP project is focused on improving the accessibility of scientific research to students from marginalized backgrounds.

Jonas Oppenheimer is a second-year member of the paleogenomics lab with Beth Shapiro in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics. Jonas works to understand the evolutionary dynamics of Beringian megafauna through ancient DNA, investigating the consequences of climate, population history, and hybridization on these species. Jonas is also a Fellow with CITL (Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning) learning pedagogical techniques to make an education in science accessible to all.

Jenny Pensky is a third-year member of Professor Andrew Fisher’s hydrogeology lab in Earth & Planetary Sciences. Jenny focuses on how managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can be used to improve both water supply and quality. For their SJTP project, Jenny and Jonas will explore the relationships between “invasive” plants, botanical gardens, and colonialism.

April 08, 2020 | Theorizing Race After Race

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Wednesday, April 08, 2020

2:00-4:00 PM

Join Science & Justice scholars for an open discussion of Theorizing Race After Race!

At this session, we will brainstorm how the COVID-19 pandemic might shift the work we are doing as a collective. We will also discuss our funding proposal, and continue our conversation from last quarter about next steps from the January 22 discussion with Herman Gray and Alondra Nelson.

More information on the cluster can be found at: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2019/05/17/theorizing-race-after-race/.

Contact Camilla Hawthorne (camilla@ucsc.edu) or Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) for the Zoom link.

Spring Science & Justice Writing Together

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Tuesdays 10:00AM –  12:00Noon

Wanting to establish a regular writing routine exploring science and justice? Join SJRC scholars over Zoom for open writing sessions! Open to all students, faculty, researchers and visiting scholars.

For more information, the Zoom link and password, or to express interest, please contact SJRC Graduate Student Researcher Dennis Browe (sociology).

structure of COVID-19

COVID-19: Open Letters

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The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls for action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Help Spread the Word of These Open Letters

Achieving A Fair and Effective COVID-19 Response: An Open Letter to Vice-President Mike Pence, and Other Federal, State and Local Leaders from Public Health and Legal Experts in the United States

America’s Bioethicists: Government Must Use Federal Powers to Fight Covid-19

structure of COVID-19

COVID-19: Calls-For-Action

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The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls for action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Help Spread the Word of These Calls for Action

In a New York Daily News Op-Ed, Susan M. Reverby calls for “Prisons and public health: Gov. Cuomo must let out thousands or many will die” (March 27, 2020) (PDF)

A Santa Cruz doctor releases a Call To Action for Healthcare Workers: “We can no longer in good conscience let politics endanger our nation in #COVID19 pandemic. Time to #LetTheScientistsLead.” (March 26, 2020)

PIH Health is preparing for a shortage of personal protective by calling for donations (March 21, 2020)

A powerful call for action from ER doctor, Joshua Lerner for the urgent need to shift production to focus on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) manufacturing to protect those on the frontline.(March 21, 2020)

UCSC scientists round-up supplies for local doctors to combat COVID-19 (March 18, 2020)

Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public Call for Papers (March 15, 2020)

Mount Sinai COVID-19 calls for plasma donations