Author Archives: Colleen Stone

May 01, 2023 | Baking Strange with Lindsay Kelley

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Monday, May 01, 2023

Time and Location TBD

On Monday, May 01 (time TBD), you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Art Professor Beth Stephens’ course for a talk with S&J Visiting Scholar Lindsay Kelley on Baking Strange.

What exactly do we eat when we eat a biscuit? Everyday objects like biscuits contain unexpected, dense connections that illuminate material and cultural networks. Thousands of years before biscuits could be purchased in packets from the grocery store, twice-baked breads circulated as military rations. When we eat biscuits, we digest their military ration predecessors with each mouthful. Their ingredients have commemorative significance and may function as reenactments of specific military contexts. Using taste and recipe formats as key methods, the multiyear research initiative Tasting History involves diverse publics in experiences of tasting and eating together.

Lindsay Kelley is a visiting scholar with the Science and Justice Research Center. She works with food and eating as sculptural and social art forms. Kelley is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art & Design, College of the Arts & Social Sciences, Australian National University, and she holds a MFA in Digital Art & New Media and a PhD in the History of Consciousness, both from the University of California Santa Cruz. She has written two books, Bioart Kitchen: Art, Feminism and Technoscience and forthcoming from MIT Press, After Eating: Metabolizing the Arts.

publication: An autoethnographic assessment of a manifesto for more trustworthy, relevant, and just models

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Melissa Eitzel Solera, now with the Center for Community and Citizen Science at UC Davis has published a new journal article and was awarded a grant by UC Davis’ Global Affairs program to build on past work with The Muonde Trust. Melissa, along with Center Director Ryan Meyer, Pamela Reynolds from UC Davis DataLab and Sarah Mccullough from UC Davis’ Feminist Research Institute were honored at a reception hosted Global Affairs celebrating their award. Their project will support Muonde in examining how well they track the outcomes of their own projects, and will advance the pursuit of diversity/equity/inclusion in community-engaged projects in the Global South by investigating how UN Sustainable Development Goals serve (or don’t serve) the community in Mazvihwa Communal Area.

Melissa Eitzel Solera is a graduate of the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management program at UC Berkeley (with dissertation work in Statistical Ecology) whose research goal is to improve the sustainability of Californian and global ecosystems using sophisticated data synthesis techniques that facilitate broad public engagement.

Working with Jenny Reardon (UC Santa Cruz Professor of Sociology and SJRC Director) and Ken Wilson (The Muonde Trust), Dr. Eitzel Solera led the NSF-funded project, “Understanding Resilience in a Complex Coupled Human-Natural System: Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Information and Community-Based Action Research,” involving a 35-year collaborative research project in rural Zimbabwe run by The Muonde Trust. Together with the community research team, they developed methods of modeling the resilience of their system and synthesizing their long-term data to answer pressing concerns about sustainable environmental management.  They also made theoretical and practical contributions to more just modeling practices in an age of “big data.” Refer to A modeler’s manifesto: Synthesizing modeling best practices with social science frameworks to support critical approaches to data science as published in Rio Journal in 2021 and Autoethnographic assessment of a manifesto for more trustworthy, relevant, and just models published in Environmental Modelling & Software on Science Direct in 2023.

April 26, 2023 | BME80G Series: Benjamin Hale on “Clean Meat and Muddy Markets: Substitution and Indeterminacy in Consumerist Solutions to Animal Agriculture”

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Wednesday, April 26, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map)

On Wednesday, April 26 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Benjamin Hale on “Clean Meat and Muddy Markets: Substitution and Indeterminacy in Consumerist Solutions to Animal Agriculture” – a panel discussion will follow.

The hope and promise of synthetic ‘cultured’ meat products is that they will serve as inexpensive substitute proteins that replace meats made by conventional animal agriculture. Where the ethical discussion concerning meat often centers on what is wrong with meat, we instead ask how consumer indifference and producer strategy might influence the uptake of clean meat in the economic market. Rather than approaching the problem in terms of substitution value, we approach the problem of substitution from the standpoint of reasons-for and reasons-against. Doing so, we suggest, exposes complications with “causal indeterminacy” that in turn implicate our thinking both about moral responsibility and the broader nature of technocratic solutions to environmental problems.

Benjamin Hale teaches environmental studies and philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  He works primarily in the area of environmental ethics and environmental policy, though his theoretical interests span much larger concerns in applied ethics, normative ethics, and even metaethics. As for applied questions, much of his recent work centers on ethical and environmental concerns presented by emerging technologies.

April 19, 2023 | Sawyer Seminar: Karina L. Walters on Transcending Historical Trauma: How to Address American Indian Health Inequities and Promote Thriving

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Wednesday, April 19, 2023

6:00 – 7:30 pm

Cowell Ranch Hay Barn (free and open to the public, register)

Thursday, April 20, 2023

12:00 – 1:30 pm

Humanities 1, room 210

SAVE-the-DATEs! On Wednesday, April 19 at 6:00 pm, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Karina L. Walters, will present a campus-wide talk at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. It is free and open to the public, though we do ask people to pre-register. Then, on Thursday, April 20, we will host a reading group at 12:00pm in Humanities 1, room 210.

Throughout history, settler colonialism has endeavored to erase the lived experiences and histories of American Indian and Alaska Native Peoples. Yet, Indigenous populations, particularly Indigenous women, remain strong and resilient pillars of communities. Oftentimes these [her]stories are missed in public health initiatives as a result of settler colonialism’s perpetual drive to erase and silence. In this talk, Dr. Walters will explore the latest advances in designing culturally derived, Indigenist health promotion interventions among American Indian and Alaska Native women. The talk will describe the indigenist methodological innovations utilized in the NIH funded Yappalli Choctaw Road to Health, a culturally focused, land-based obesity and substance abuse prevention program as well as the national multi-site Honor Project Two-Spirit Health Study. Consistent with tribal systems of knowledge, both studies illustrate the importance of developing culturally derived health promotion interventions rooted in Indigenist thoughtways and land-based practices to promote Indigenous thrivance and community well-being.

Dr. Karina L. Walters (MSW, PhD) is the recently appointed Director of the Tribal Health Research Office at the National Institute of Health. She is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a Katherine Hall Chambers University Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, and an adjunct Professor in the Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI) at the University of Washington. Dr. Walters is world renowned for her expertise in developing behavioral and multi-level health interventions steeped in culture to activate health-promoting behaviors. She has written landmark papers on traumatic stress and health, historical and intergenerational trauma, and originated the Indigenist Stress-Coping model. She has led 22 NIH-funded studies, is one of the leading American Indian scientists in the country, and is only one of two American Indians (and the only Native woman) ever invited to deliver the prestigious Director’s lecture to the Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) at the NIH. She is the first American Indian Fellow inductee into the American Academy of Social Welfare and Social Work (AASWSW).

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

April 12, 2023 | BME80G Series: Krystal Tsosie on “Referring to Whom? The ‘Indigenous Reference Genome'”

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map) or Zoom (registration)

On Wednesday, April 12 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by indigenous geneticist- bioethicist Dr. Krystal Tsosie – a panel discussion will follow.

A zoom option is available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Register for the Zoom link here.

Krystal Tsosie (Diné/Navajo Nation), Ph.D., MP..H, M.A., is an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. As an advocate for Indigenous genomic data sovereignty, she co-founded the first US Indigenous-led biobank, called the Native BioData Consortium. Her research can be encapsulated in two main foci: Indigenous population genetics and bioethics. In particular, she focuses on bioethical engagement of Indigenous communities in genomics and data science to build trust. As a whole, her interest is in integrating genomic and data approaches to assess Indigenous variation contributing to health inequities. Her research and educational endeavors have received increasing national and international media attention as scientists worldwide are understanding the importance of equitable, community-based engagement models and the importance of Indigenous genomic data sovereignty. Her work has been covered by popular media outlets including PBS NOVA, The Washington Post, NPR, New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Boston Globe. She currently serves on the Government Policy and Advocacy Committee for the American Society of Human Genetics and the National Academy of Medicine Announces Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation. She is a current Global Chair in ENRICH (Equity for Indigenous Research and Innovation Coordinating Hub), which focuses on enhancing Indigenous rights to develop, control, and govern Indigenous data and supports participation in STEM and in digitally‐enabled futures.

April 05, 2023 | BME80G Series: Joseph Graves on “Racism, Not Race: Answers to the most critical questions”

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Wednesday, April 05, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Zoom (registration)

Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman (Columbia University Press, 2023)

On Wednesday, April 05 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Dr. Joseph Graves on “Racism, Not Race: Answers to the most critical questions” – a panel discussion will follow.

Order a copy of Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions!

In advance of Grave’s lecture, the UCSC Genomics Institute’s Racial Justice Learning and Action Group will read Grave’s most recent book, Racism Not Race, Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. Anyone affiliated with UC Santa Cruz is welcome to attend. Click here to add the first meeting to your calendar (must be logged into your UCSC gmail account). The reading schedule is:

  • Wednesday, March 15: Discuss Preface, Introduction, and Chapters 1-3
  • Wednesday, March 22: Discuss Chapters 4-7
  • Wednesday, March 29: Discuss Chapters 8-11 and Conclusions

Contact Mary Goldman about the reading group.

Joseph L. Graves Jr. is a professor of biological science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and a former associate dean for research at the Joint School for Nanoscience and Nanoengineering. He has written extensively on genetics and race including Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Columbia University Press, 2023).

The Science History Institute’s Distillations, Innate: “The Vampire Project”

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Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon, founding director of the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz, was featured in podcast episode 4 of the ‘Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race’ a project exploring the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.

podcast episode 4 of the Innate series on "How Science Invented the Myth of Race"

Episode 4 of ‘Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race’ podcast.

Listen to or read the transcript

book

Call for Undergraduate Individual Study (apply by March 8)

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The Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) invites undergraduate students to apply as researchers for the Spring 2023 term. The SJRC will host up to 2 Individual Study students to collaborate on the LEED research project. The Individual Study course, can range from 2-5 units, be independent or group and will include directed readings, guided independent and collaborative research and project planning. 

Available Spring 2023

Leadership in the Ethical and Equitable Design (LEED) of STEM Research: Up to 2 students will work directly with Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon’s team of researchers and collaborators at Columbia University, University of Washington, and Stanford to facilitate the creation of a cross-sector, cross-national effort to reformulate the meaning of good science in ways that center diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of research, and the goals of advancing equity and justice. Specifically, students will work with the LEED Team to identify existing guidelines and best practices in a STEM area of interest to the student, and help to complete a systematic document review using qualitative research methods (including coding with MAXQDA software). This research will inform the development of LEED principles and practices. 

Learn more in this campus news article: National Science Foundation grant will help establish ethics and equity best practices for emerging forms of science and technology and in this CellPress publication, “Trustworthiness matters: Building equitable and ethical science” that announces the collaborative project.

To Apply:

By Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 12 noon, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) with their resume/CV and a very brief letter of  interest. We’re excited to learn about you and teach you what we’ve learned from each other! Please let us know the following:

  1. your name, major(s), any faculty advisors.
  2. any experiences with related research, why you are interested in being involved, and how your curriculum, research, or career goals would benefit from the independent study.

March 7-8, 2023 | Sawyer Seminar: Wangui Muigai on Fighting for Life: Race and the Limits of Infant Survival

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Tuesday, March 07, 2023

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

University Center

 

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Humanities 1, 210

On Tuesday, March 7 at 5:00pm at the University Center, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Wangui Muigai, will present a talk titled, “Fighting for Life: Race and the Limits of Infant Survival.” Then, on Wednesday, March 8, we will host a reading group with Muigai at 4:00pm. Both activities will be in-person only.

Join Dr. Wangui Muigai as she charts the history of one of the most enduring health disparities in America, the racial gap in infant survival. Drawing on a trove of historical records and archival materials, this talk follows Black families as they have journeyed from birthing rooms to burial grounds, fighting for the ability to birth and nurture healthy babies. In charting the historical landscapes of Black infant death across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dr. Muigai will examine the role of cultural practices, medical theories, and communal initiatives to explain and address the causes of Black infant death. The talk considers the legacy of these ideas and efforts in ongoing struggles to preserve Black life.

Wangui Muigai is an Assistant Professor at Brandeis University in the departments of History, African & African American Studies and the Health: Science, Society, and Policy Program. Dr. Muigai was named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and selected as a Class of 2025 Fellow in the Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics. Her first book, on the history of infant death in the Black experience, is forthcoming with Harvard University Press.

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.