Assistant Professor of Sociology and Interim SJRC Director (fall 2020) James Doucet-Battle’s new book challenges assumptions about race within diabetes research and delves into the issue through the lens of African American experience.
Learn more in this campus news article, “Uncovering the social factors lurking within diabetes risk.”
The Pandemicene Podcast aims 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.
Airing on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, December 13th, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below after the episode airs.
Welcome to the Pandemicene podcast! Today we welcome you to a conversation with Ruth Müller.
Guest Bio:
Ruth Müller is a researcher in the interdisciplinary research field of Science & Technology studies. She has studied molecular biology (M.Sc.; 2000-2007) and sociology (PhD; 2007-2012) at the University of Vienna, Austria. During her studies, she conducted research on breast cancer at the Medical University of Vienna (2001-2005) before she started to work on issues of life sciences, society & policy at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna (2005-2011). She held postdoctoral positions at the Austrian Institute of International Affairs (2012-2013) and at the Research Policy Institute, Lund University, Sweden (2013-2015), and she has been a recurring visiting research the Science & Justice Research Center, University of California Santa Cruz, U.S.. In February 2015, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Science & Technology Policy at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, a co-appointment with the TUM School of Management and the TUM School of Life Sciences.
Find more information on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.
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, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.
The interactive web project by Film & Digital Media Professor Sharon Daniel creates cumulative public record and evolving history of the pandemic’s impact on those incarcerated. Exposed is the latest in a series of new media documentary projects created by Daniel that reveal social and economic injustice across public institutions, including the criminal justice system, the prison industrial complex, the public health system, and the public education system.
Learn more in this campus news article, “UCSC arts professor documents spread of COVID-19 inside prisons, jails, and detention centers.”
The Pandemicene Podcast aims 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.
Aired on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, December 6th, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below.
Welcome to the Pandemicene Podcast. Today we welcome you to a conversation with Martha Kenney, recorded on September 22nd, 2020. Dr. Kenney is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and an interdisciplinary scholar in the science, technology, and society hub there. In this conversation, we touch on many topics, from the fables of individualism that have dominated popular discourse around the COVID-19 pandemic, to the importance of media literacy, to the role that speculative fiction can play in processing our current reality and opening space up to imagine new worlds. Our conversation begins with Dr. Kenney telling us about how she has guided her attention throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and how she has responded thus far.
Guest Bios:
Martha Kenney (Ph.D. History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz) is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies department at San Francisco State University. She is a feminist science studies scholar whose research explores the poetics and politics of biological storytelling. Her current project examines and intervenes in the narratives emerging from the new field of environmental epigenetics, which studies how signals from the environment affect gene expression. Specifically, she looks at how assumptions about gender, race, class and sexuality influence the design of epigenetic experiments on model organisms and how we understand the relationship between bodies and environments. She has recent and forthcoming articles in Social Studies of Science, Science as Culture, Biosocieties and Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Dr. Kenney teaches courses on the politics of science, technology, medicine and the environment. Dr. Kenney was a founding graduate student researcher with the UC Santa Cruz Science & Justice Working Group and a fellow of the Science & Justice Training Program.
Works Cited in Interview:
Penkler, Michael; Ruth Müller; Martha Kenney; and Mark Hanson. “Back to normal? Building community resilience after COVID-19.” The Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology. August 2020.
Find more information on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.
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, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.
The Pandemicene Podcast aims 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.
Airing on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, November 29th, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below after the episode airs.
Welcome to the Pandemicene podcast where we attempt to create knowledge that orients us towards justice at this critical historical juncture. On May 13th, 2020, we spoke with Dr. Owain Williams, Lecturer in International Relations and Global Security at the University of Leeds, and a former Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland. Dr. Williams is a political economist of global health, who focuses on health policy and intellectual property rights and access to medicines. We talked about his COVID Diaries project, privatization of the aged care sector, the pandemic as a crisis of capitalism, and the necessity for universal health coverage policies. Though much time has passed and the pandemic has evolved, we hope to think together with our listeners about which of Dr. Williams’s thoughts and predictions have been accurate and useful, and which parts we all need to think anew.
Guest Bio:
Dr. Owain Williams is a Lecturer in International Relations and Global Security at the University of Leeds, and a former Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland. He is an expert on the politics and political economy of health policy, and on intellectual property rights and access to medicines. He worked for the UNDP as a consultant on this area in 2014. He has published on access to medicines and global health governance, and new actors in health. His work includes, with Adrian Kay (eds.) Global Health Governance: Crisis, Institutions and Political Economy (Palgrave 2009); Partnerships and Foundations in Global Health Governance with Simon Rushton (eds.) ((Palgrave 2011), New Political Economy of Pharmaceuticals in the Global South (Palgrave 2013); and The Transformation of Global Health Governance (Palgrave 2014). He manages a range of projects on testing with the Queensland Chair in HIV and STIs and works in the broad area of global health governance from a platform of community engagement. He is convener of the Pacific Health Governance workshop and Research Network.
Find more information on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.
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, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.
The Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) invites up to 10 undergraduate students to join a cohort of researchers for both Winter and Spring 2021 terms. The Individual Study can range from 2-5 units and are part of a group. Independently, students can also work on senior thesis projects in areas related to Center themes (ie: forensic genomics, queer ecology, CRISPR, data privacy and biosurveillance, health care disparities and incarceration, the future of public goods, artificial intelligence and ethics, reproducibility and diversity in research).
SJRC student researchers help inform collaborative research, contribute to co-authored developing blogs, podcasts, and websites, opinion pieces, papers and proposals as well as help design Center programming. Students may track, collect, and organize articles from prominent theorists of race, inequality, and science and technology studies to continue our study of the social, political, and economic dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, Winter and Spring opportunities include: working with a current cohort of students, staff and faculty affiliates to continue work in progress, conduct interviews and prepare transcriptions, edit interviews, create outreach materials sharing findings of research activities with the broader public (ie: writing blogposts, articles or reports, creating infographics, podcast episodes, animations, illustrations, interactive documentary websites, etc.). Students may also act as Critical Listeners (report on) select virtual related events (ie: Feb 2 IAS w/ SJRC colleague Ruha Benjamin).
Those interested in broadcast journalism, social documentation, digital and online student and public engagement are especially encouraged to apply.
Available Winter and Spring 2021
The COVID-19 Pandemicene Project: Re-Worlding Toward Justice – expand zine, blog and podcast to interview policy makers, practitioners, mutual-aid and community organizers. Current student leads are looking to add those interested in conducting interviews and those interested in getting the interview to the public via blogs, podcast episodes and additional mediums (ie: animations, soundscapes, illustrations, etc.) and promotion methods (ie: social media, charts, graphics, photographs, maps, other new or historical oral and written materials). Learn more: The Pandemicene Project.
Incarcerated Care – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in the Pandemicene Project, up to 2 students will work directly with Film and Digital Media Professor Sharon Daniel’s team to expand an interactive documentary website on COVID-19 in prisons and jails. Learn more: Public Art and Carcerality, Unjustly Exposed.
Orphan Drugs – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in the Pandemicene Project, up to 2 students will work with an independent researcher and faculty (James Doucet-Battle, Jenny Reardon, Jeremy Sanford, Matt Sparke, Michael Stone) on items related to pharmaceutical licensing agreements, bringing drugs to the market, ethical and equity issues related to orphan-disease drug discovery and dissemination. Learn more: student blog.
Laboratory Life and Social Death: The Problem of Diversity in Science and Society – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in the Pandemicene Project, up to 2 students will work directly with Sociology Assistant Professor James Doucet-Battle on linkages between the social sciences, African Diaspora Studies, history, politics, and genomic science curriculum and training to conceptualize and develop an engaging and interactive online summer program in partnership with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Students may assist with research on and collecting materials related to the rigor, reproducibility and diversity of biomolecular data; identify other all-campus resources serving ABC students (ie: partner with AARC, HSI initiative, ODEI) and known challenges specific to summer sessions (refer to current BSU demands). Learn more: Bioethical Matriarchy (Doucet-Battle 2016), UC/HBCU initiative.
To Apply:
By Monday, December 7, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) with their resume/CV and expressing interest. We’re excited to learn about you, teach you what we’ve learned from each other, and incorporate your ideas! Please let us know the following:
The first installment of a series of dialogues on COVID-19 and Racism of the SJRC’s Theorizing Race After Race working group is now live on the UCHRI Foundry website! Check out Black Geographies of Quarantine: A Dialogue with Brandi Summers, Camilla Hawthorne, and Theresa Hice Fromille.
Special thanks to Science & Justice researcher Aitanna Paker (recent graduate of Critical Race and Ethic Studies and Technology and Information Management) for helping with the interview.
Aitanna Parker is a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz, with a BA in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and a BS in Technology and Information Management. She plans to use her technical abilities for social good. Aitanna is currently working with the Science & Justice Research Center, looking at datasets to understand how Covid is negatively impacting racialized populations in the United States. She wants to continue this work in graduate school.
Theresa Hice Fromille is pursuing her PhD in Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, with designated emphases in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies. Her dissertation project draws insights from Black Geographies and youth studies to investigate how Black youth from the United States construct their racial identities during international travel.
Camilla Hawthorne is Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, a principal faculty member in the UCSC Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program, and a faculty affiliate of the UCSC Science & Justice Research Center and Legal Studies Program. Camilla’s current project explores the ways that citizenship has emerged as a key terrain of struggle over racial nationalism in Italy, and argues that citizenship is crucial for understanding how racism and race are being reconfigured in the twenty-first century.
Brandi Summers is Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at UC Berkeley and an alum of the UC Santa Cruz Sociology graduate program. Her research builds on epistemological and methodological insights from cultural and urban geography, urban sociology, African American studies, and media studies. Brandi’s first book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City, explores how aesthetics and race converge to locate or map blackness in Washington, D.C.
The Pandemicene Podcast aims 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.
Airing on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, November 22nd, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below after the episode airs.
On August 24th, 2020, we spoke with Erin McElroy about housing justice, landlord tech and surveillance, and the role of AI in this new world shaped by the pandemic. McElroy earned their doctorate of Feminist Studies from UC Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s AI Now Institute. Due to the urban soundscape of New York City, we decided to edit out some of the segments from this Zoom interview that were important but too challenging to hear clearly, including McElroy’s introduction to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. In early 2021, SJRC will help McElroy celebrate the launch of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s newly released book: Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance, published by PM Press.
Guest Bio:
Erin McElroy is a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s AI Now Institute, and cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. Erin earned a doctoral degree in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on the politics of space, race, and technology in Romania and Silicon Valley, and is an editor of Radical Housing Journal.
Find more information on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.
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, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.
Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes. U Minn Press, March 2021.
Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.
James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes.
Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.
The book will be available in March 2021 at: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/sweetness-in-the-blood
Learn more in this campus news article, Uncovering the social factors lurking within diabetes risk.
James Doucet-Battle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Fall 2020 Interim Director of the Science & Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. He applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities.
The Pandemicene Podcast aims 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.
Airing on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, November 15th, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below after the episode airs.
Welcome to the Pandemicene podcast! Today we speak with Dr. Rebecca DuBois, associate professor of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. We ask her thoughts on the many issues involved in developing a COVID-19 vaccine, including the biological details of what a vaccine might look like and be capable of, the necessary phases of clinical trials, and bioethical issues of equity and fairness that will arise during eventual vaccine distribution. Note that this interview was conducted on September 3rd, 2020, and much has changed over the past two months, including the U.S. political landscape and breakthroughs in vaccine development.
Guest Bio:
Rebecca DuBois is an associate professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She runs the DuBois Lab on campus, which seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms of virus infections, and to use this information to develop new vaccines and antiviral therapeutics.
Find more information on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.
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, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.