May 07, 2025 | Dark Matter, Dirty Xenon, and the Limits of Laboratory Experiments

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

3:00-4:30pm

Humanities 1, Room 210

On Wednesday May 7th, join Science & Justice Visiting Scholar Jaco de Swart for a talk, “Dark Matter, Dirty Xenon, and the Limits of Laboratory Experiments.”

Laboratory sciences crucially depend on experiments being clean. But what is clean? In this talk, I open up versions of clean relating to different ontological registers, and trace the material practices of cleaning as they are attuned to experimental specificities. My case is the XENONnT experiment in the Gran Sasso Mountains of Italy which is meant to detect dark matter in the form the hypothetical WIMP – the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. This experiment is clean when it is ‘free from signals that mimic dark matter’. In practice, such cleanliness has been difficult to achieve – soaps may be radioactive, steel may spread electronegativity, and humans are altogether dangerously filthy. And because, at least thus far, dark matter remains elusive, it is impossible to tell whether the meticulously cleaned detector is adequately clean. Additional cleaning efforts will make the detector sensitive to neutrino particles: a background that cannot be cleaned away. As the experimenters dread the possibility that this means their experiment will end in limbo, other physicists are now trying to detect other hypothetical dark matter particles with other kinds of experiments, requiring other kinds of cleanliness. The XENONnT experiment itself, meanwhile, has had to ensure that it does not interfere with environmental cleanliness, as per the demands of the surrounding society.

This work is done in collaboration with Annemarie Mol (University of Amsterdam).

Jaco de Swart is aAIP Helleman Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT’s Program in STS and Department of Physics, and a visitor at UCSC’s Science and Justice Research Center. He received his PhD at the Institute of Physics at the University of Amsterdamwas a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, and has held visiting positions at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on historical and anthropological studies of open problems in cosmology and he is currently writing a book on the history of dark matter under contract with MIT Press. De Swart is also a member of several physics collaborations to help develop social and environmental responsible research practices. He has a passion for science communicationappearing in PBS NOVA’s Decoding the Universe—and is bassist in the band X Raiders.

May 06, 2025 | Through the Image of the Animal: The Celluloid Specimen with Dr. Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

12:00-1:30pm

Communications Building, Classroom 130

Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Yet converting the bafflingly complex bodies and behaviours of nonhuman animals into scientific models is not a straightforward process. Film has been an essential, yet largely overlooked, element within this process. Often treated as purely transparent scientific recordings, the films produced out of animal research are in fact deeply formalist works that tested what film could capture through the image of an animal—variously proposing that they could visualise pure thought, the processes of history and culture, and the influence of environment on an organism. Drawing on his recent book, Schultz-Figueroa will speak and present filmed examples of primate insight and creativity, Alfred Kinsey’s experiments into animal sexuality, lab rats made to live in a model of a dystopian future, animal recreations of Marxist theory, and more. This work uncovers a dynamic field of scientific looking, where the distinctions between nature and culture are inscribed and reinscribed into animal images, generating concepts that broadly shaped the politics of immigration, labor relations, educational practice, and gender identity, well beyond the walls of the lab.

Dr. Schultz-Figueroa is Associate Professor of Film and Media at Seattle University. His research focuses on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. His book The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (University of California Press) was published in 2023. He is currently working on two projects, tentatively titled Against Encounter: The Problem of Organicism in Animal Documentary and Beastly Futures: Rightwing Animal Aesthetics in the 21st Century.

Hosted by the Center for Documentary Arts and Research and the Film & Digital Media Department.

May 02, 2025 | BME80G Series: Mohammed Mostajo-Radji on Consciousness and Neuroethics: Exploring the Boundaries of Personhood and Research

Friday, May 02, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, May 02 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji.

Consciousness and Neuroethics: Exploring the Boundaries of Personhood and Research

Ethics Consciousness remains one of the most profound and debated topics in neuroscience, philosophy, and bioethics. This presentation explores diverse perspectives on consciousness, from philosophical frameworks like dualism and monism to cutting-edge neuroscientific approaches using human brain organoids. As organoid research advances, ethical questions surrounding personhood, animal welfare, and the moral status of artificially grown neural structures become increasingly urgent. By examining case studies of human brain organoids, chimeric models, and neural restoration techniques, we will discuss the ethical challenges of defining consciousness and its implications for medical research, end-of-life care, and the future of neuroscience.

Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji, Assistant Research Scientist, UCSC Genomics Institute.

Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji is an Assistant Research Scientist at the UCSC Genomics Institute, where his is part of the Braingeneers group, a multidisciplinary collective of geneticists, neuroscientists, and engineers focused on the human brain specification and function. His research explores neuronal specification and fate plasticity in the cerebral cortex using brain organoid models. Additionally, he leads the Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab, which develops cloud-based experimental science education technologies. Dr. Mostajo-Radji earned his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University and completed postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco Department of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

April 25, 2025 | BME80G Series: Jenny Reardon on Contesting Scientific Anti-Racism: Who Decides Its Meaning?

Friday, April 25, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101

On Friday, April 18 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk, Contesting Scientific Anti-Racism: Who Decides Its Meaning?, by Jenny Reardon.

Contesting Scientific Anti-Racism: Who Decides Its Meaning?

Description is forthcoming.

Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology, Founding Director, Science and Justice Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Jenny Reardon is Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

Readings

Small, Zachary. 2025 “Taking Aim at Smithsonian, Trump Wades Into Race and Biology.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/arts/design/trump-smithsonian-race.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Miriam, Frankel.  2015. “Rocks and racism? How geologists created and perpetuated a narrative of prejudice” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/16/rocks-and-racism-how-geologists-created-and-perpetuated-a-narrative-of-prejudice

April 25, 2025 | Slow Seminar Book Celebration: Unmaking Botany

Friday, April 25, 2025

11:00 am – 1:00 pm, reception to follow 

Humanities 2, Room 259 + Zoom (RSVP by April 17th)

Please join the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) for a hybrid slow seminar, a discussion (and celebration) of Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippinesa new book by Professor Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez of the UCSC History Department. The slow seminar will be on Friday, April 25, from 11am-1pm. There will be a reception with light refreshments to follow. 
 
Please RSVP by Thursday, April 17th by filling out this form. Graduate students interested in a copy of the book will be able to indicate so on the form. 
 
Please feel free to circulate this email with the attached flyer to relevant groups. What is a Slow Seminar? Read our explainer and check out past events here.

About Unmaking Botany

Unmaking Botany traces a history of imperial botany in the Philippines from the last decades of Spanish rule through the first decades of US colonization. Gutierrez approaches this history through the tension between how vernacular knowledge systems both revealed the limits of botany at the same time as they reinforced the dominance of botanical science over other ways of knowing plants. These “sovereign vernaculars” both made and unmade botany, a concept that is a methodological provocation to study the history of science from multiple vantage points and examine the interplay between different knowledge systems.
 
The e-book is now available through the UCSC library at this link. A number of physical copies of the book will be available free of charge to graduate students, courtesy of the author. If you wish to order the book from Duke University Press, you may receive 30% off with discount code E25GUTRZ. 

About the Author

Kat Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz who specializes in Philippine history, postcolonial science and technology studies, histories of plant science, agrarian migration, and community-engaged research. Gutierrez is co-PI of the Watsonville is in the Heart community archive and research project and co-director of SEACoast.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the Department of History, and the Science and Justice Research Center

April 23, 2025 | TechnoScience Improv

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

12:15-2:00pm

Humanities 1, Room 210

This roundtable improv brings together ten UCSC scholars working on social, historical, and cultural studies of science, technology and medicine. The event will be structured around eight open, improvised conversations. Rather than structured around formal talks, each conversation will start with a question from a different panelist exploring emerging practices, speculative transformations, and critical imaginings of technoscience, health and ecology.

Convener:

Dimitris Papadopoulos

Participants:

Karen Barad is Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness.

James Doucet-Battle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Kat Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the History Department.

Dimitris Papadopoulos is Professor of History of Consciousness in the Department of History of Consciousness.

Maria Puig de la Bellacasa is Professor of History of Consciousness in the Department of History of Consciousness.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Warren Sack is Professor of the Software Arts in the Film + Digital Media Department.

Kriti Sharma is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

Matt Sparke is Professor of Politics in the Politics Department and Co-Director of Global and Community Health.

Zac Zimmer is an Associate Professor of Literature in the Literature Department.

This talk is part of the earth ecologies x technoscience series in co-sponsorship with the History of Consciousness Department.

April 18, 2025 | BME80G Series: Kim TallBear on From Feminist Science Studies to Native-Led Science for Land and Life

Friday, April 18, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, April 18 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Kim TallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society.

From Feminist Science Studies to Native-Led Science for Land and Life

Indigenous peoples are often at the receiving end of the colonial gaze, including that of scientific researchers whose work has served US and Canadian national development. Kim TallBear is best known for her anthropological study of colonial narratives such as that of the “Vanishing Indian” that animate human population genetics research. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with scientists and social scientists to channel feminist and Indigenous analyses of science into training Indigenous scientists in critical approaches to genomics. The resulting program, Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING), goes beyond critique to transform science to support Indigenous governance and life. SING Canada, founded in 2018, surpasses diversity and inclusion, and reaches toward decolonization by helping develop critical Indigenous genomics to support Indigenous governance and land back projects. This talk touches on both the disciplinary/theoretical underpinnings and programmatic details of such training.

Kim TallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Dr. TallBear is a regular panelist on the Media Indigena podcast and a regular media commentator on topics including Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; self-indigenization in the US and Canada; and Indigenous sexualities. You can follow her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization at https://kimtallbear.substack.com.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

April 16, 2025 | Give It A Shot: an ongoing documentary

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

4:00-6:00pm

Online Only

UCSC Science & Justice Research Center affiliated faculty are invited on Wednesday, April 16th at 4PM for a private discussion and a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas in these critical and challenging times! At this session, we will engage with filmmaker Vaishali Sinha over her work including an exciting ongoing project. Associate Professor of Sociology Madhavi Murty will provide comments.

Space is limited to six UC Santa Cruz faculty only. To express interest and receive the Zoom link, please fill out this RSVP form or contact Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) or Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Vaishali Sinha produced and directed the award-winning feature documentaries, MADE IN INDIA (PBS, Kanopy) and ASK THE SEXPERT (PBS World, Netflix India, Amazon Prime).

April 11, 2025 | BME80G Series: Christof Koch on Consciousness and its Place in Nature

Friday, April 11, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

VIRTUAL (flyer)

On Friday, April 11 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Christof Koch.

A zoom option or recording may be available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) to request access.

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

Any scientific theory of consciousness, here meant as any experience – feeling-like-something, seeing, smelling, thinking, fearing, dreaming – needs to not only explain the relationship between experience and its substrate, the neural correlate of consciousness, but also why different experiences feel the way they do – why space feels spatially extended, why time flows and why colors feel different from an infected tooth or the taste of Nutella. Most contemporary theories of consciousness are based on computational functionalism. Integrated Information Theory takes a purely operational approach rooted in causal power. IIT argues that the neuronal correlates of consciousness, the maximum of intrinsic cause-effect power, are the posterior hot zone, and that certain types of meditative or psychedelic experiences may go together with a “silent” cortex. I will discuss clinical progress achieved in locating the footprints of such experiences to the posterior part of the cerebral cortex and in reliably detecting the presence of covert consciousness in patients with Disorder of Consciousness.

Christof Koch, PhD, Meritorious Investigator, Allen Institute, Seattle, Chief Scientist, Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, Santa Monica

Christof Koch PhD, is a neuroscientist best known for his studies and writings exploring the basis of consciousness, starting with the molecular biologist Francis Crick. Trained as a physicist, Christof was for 27 years a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology. In 2011, he joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle as their Chief Scientist, becoming the President in 2015. He is now Meritorious Investigator at the Allen Institute and the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, with its focus on understanding consciousness, and how this knowledge can benefit humanity. His latest book is Then I am myself the world.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

April 10, 2025 | Public Research Action Network: Stand Up for Science; Stand Up for Knowledge

Thursday, April 10, 2025

6:00 – 7:30 pm 

Coastal Science Building CBB110

Join the newly-created Public Research Action Network!

Building on the momentum from the highly successful Stand up for Science UCSC rallies held in March 2025, faculty are forming a group that will meet regularly with the slogan “Stand Up for Science; Stand Up for Knowledge”. The goal will be to keep up with the changing landscape regarding publicly-based research across all disciplines. The format is collaborative, with a plan for ~30-45 minutes of sharing some current events and updates, and ~45 minutes of action—oriented outreach plans including possibly letter and op-ed writing, working on communications to the UCSC Academic Senate and/or administrators, connecting with state and federal leaders, or other ideas to be crafted together. Meetings will take place once/month on the 2nd Thursday. 

Parking at the Coastal Science Campus is available with no permits after 5pm.