Author Archives: Colleen Stone

February 07, 2022 | Book Launch! Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media by micha cárdenas

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Monday, February 07, 2022

5:00 PM

To celebrate the launch of micha cárdenas’ new book, Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media, forthcoming from Duke University Press, the department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies along with Performance, Play and Design will host a book launch event on Monday, February 7th at the Cowell Provost house at 5:00PM with Gerald Casel and Nick Mitchell as respondents!

The book is available as a Kindle Edition on Amazon. Other formats available soon at https://www.dukeupress.edu/poetic-operations.

More about the book can be found at: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2022/01/03/book-poetic-operations-cardenas/

January 19, 2022 | Works-in-Progress with Daphne Martschenko and Sam Trejo

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Wednesday, January 19, 2022

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Zoom Registration

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work.

At this session, we will hear from Daphne Martschenko, a Research Fellow at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and collaborator Sam Trejo, an Assistant Professor in the Department Sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, on how ethical, anticipatory genomics research on human behavior means celebrating disagreement.

Despite the many social and ethical considerations in human genetics, researchers and communities remain largely siloed as for-profit direct-to-consumer genetic testing and the application of polygenic scores to in vitro fertilization services become increasingly prevalent. The multifaceted challenges facing genomics, both empirical and ethical, require collaborations that foster critical dialogue and honest debate between communities inside and outside the research enterprise. This works-in-progress argues that in order to respond to the premature or inappropriate use of genomic data in industry, the scientific community needs to embrace, understand, and be in dialogue about its disagreements. We begin by introducing the research framework of adversarial collaboration as a way to celebrate disagreement and then discuss ideas from the Genetics & Social Inequality chapter of our ongoing book project ‘Debating DNA’.

Sam and Daphne are currently writing a book together for Princeton University Press that unpacks various social, ethical, and policy issues related to the DNA revolution. Their goal is to present a genuine middle ground, moving past the dichotomies—interpretivist vs. positivist, qualitative vs. quantitative, optimism vs. pessimism regarding biological explanations—that vex the biosocial sciences.

Daphne O. Martschenko PhD, is a Research Fellow at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and co-organizer of the international Race, Empire, and Education Research Collective. Daphne’s work advocates for and facilitates research efforts that promote socially responsible communication of and community engagement with social and behavioral genomics.

Sam Trejo PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department Sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. He is quantitative social scientist interested in how social and biological factors jointly shape human development across the life-course and specialize in quasi-experimental, biosocial, and computational methods. Sam’s research capitalizes on two data sources that, until recently, were unavailable to researchers: (1) large administrative datasets and (2) longitudinal studies containing molecular genetic data.

Mellon Foundation Humanities Grant To Investigate Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine

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Thanks to a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, faculty and students at UC Santa Cruz will have a chance to critically investigate the relationships among medicine, race, and the environment both in the United States and in other regions of the globe shaped by the influence of American medicine.

The $225,000 award will support “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine,” a Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture, that, starting in Fall 2022, will bring scientists, physicians, and scholars of the humanities and social sciences together with students and members of the UC Santa Cruz community for a series of public lectures, reading groups, and research fellowships at the graduate and postdoctoral levels.

The effort is led by S&J affiliated faculty Jennifer Derr, associate professor of history, the founding director of the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and Jenny Reardon, professor of sociology, the founding director of the Science and Justice Research Center.

Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine

November 10, 2021 | Book Launch! Life As We Made It + SJTP Fellow Presentation

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Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined—and Redefined—Nature (Basic Books, 2021)

On Wednesday, November 10, 2021 from 4:00-5:30 PM we joined in celebrating the launch of SJRC affiliate faculty Beth Shapiro’s new book, Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined—and Redefined—Nature (Basic Books, 2021)! (poster – PDF)

Science & Justice Training Program Fellows, Jonas Oppenheimer and Jenny Pensky presented findings from their collaborative research project exploring the relationships between “invasive” plants, botanical gardens, and colonialism – as well as – put their work into conversation with Shapiro’s Life as We Made It.

A link to the research and a rapporteur report will be posted once available.

Learn more about Life as We Made It in this campus news article: https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/10/shapiro-book.html

Beth Shapiro is a professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and PI of the UCSC Paleogenomics Lab.

Jonas Oppenheimer is a 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 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.

 

November 10, 2021 | Graduate Training Program Informational Meeting

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The Science and Justice Research Center will host an Informational Meeting on our internationally recognized interdisciplinary Graduate Training and Certificate Program:

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

12:00-1:30PM

Zoom Registration

Our Science and Justice Training Program (SJTP) is a globally unique initiative that trains doctoral students to work across the disciplinary boundaries of the natural and social sciences, engineering, humanities and the arts. Through the SJTP we at UC Santa Cruz currently teach new generations of PhD students the skills of interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical deliberation, and public communication. Students in the program design collaborative research projects oriented around questions of science and justice. These research projects not only contribute to positive outcomes in the wider world, they also become the templates for new forms of problem-based and collaborative inquiry within and beyond the university.

As SJTP students graduate they take the skills and experience they gained in the training program into the next stage of their career in universities, industry, non-profits, and government.

Opportunities include graduate Certificate Program, experience organizing and hosting colloquia series about the research projects, mentorship, potential for additional research funding and training in conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersections of science and society.

WINTER 2022 COURSE:

Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration (SOCY/BME/FMST 268A and ANTH 267), Assist. Prof. James Doucet-Battle, scheduled Monday’s 1:30-4:30pm, Rachel Carson College, 301. Enrollment in the course is required for participating in the Training Program. Attending the informational meeting is strongly encouraged, but not required.

Students from all disciplines are encouraged to attend

Prior graduate fellows have come from every campus Division.

22 Represented Departments: Anthropology, Biomolecular Engineering, Digital Arts & New Media, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Education, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Feminist Studies, Film & Digital Media, History, History of Consciousness, Latin American & Latino Studies, Literature, Math, Philosophy, Physics, Politics, Psychology, Social Documentation, Sociology, and Visual Studies.

Past collaborative research projects have included:

  • Physicists working with small scale farmers to develop solar greenhouses scaled to local farming needs.
  • Colloquia about the social and political consequences of scientific uncertainties surrounding topics such as climate change research, food studies, genomics and identity.
  • Examining how art can empower justice movements.
  • Working with local publics to improve African fishery science.

For more information on the Science & Justice Training Program, visit: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/about-sjrc/sjtp/

Join the SJRC at the October 6th Meet & Greet from 4:00-5:30!

November 03, 2021 | Giving Day

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Wednesday, November 3, 2021

All-Day

Join the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday, November 3rd, for Giving Day, a 24-hour online fundraising drive!

Help support our Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) and the next cohort of student researchers by giving through the Science & Justice campaign. Incentives to give include matching funds: if you are interested in matching funds, please email scijust@ucsc.edu.

ABOUT the SJRC’s SJTP

Started in 2010 with a grant from the National Science Foundation, 2020 marked the ten year anniversary of the internationally-recognized Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP), and will be offered again in 2022. Now more than ever the training offered by the SJTP is critical to addressing the problems of our times: ecological destruction and pandemics; data justice in an age of AI; growing inequalities in access to novel therapeutics; access to basic health care in the jails and prisons. These are problems that are not the domain of one discipline or area of practice. They require working across fields and industries of knowledge, methods, and practice. The SJTP provides the space and transdisciplinary tools and thought needed for social science, humanities, engineering, physical and biological science, and arts students to collaborate with each other and our community partners to respond to core concerns of our times.

Our Science & Justice Training Program trains graduate student researchers to place a commitment to ethics and justice at the heart of science and technology.

Why Support S&J

Central to the success of our students is their ability to work on their Science & Justice projects during the summer. With your help, we can offer summer fellowships that support this critical dimension of the training of future leaders in the emerging field of Science and Justice.

Share our Campaign for Justice!

Post on social media and tell your friends to join us on Wednesday, November 3.

Thank you for making a more just world possible!

October 27, 2021 | Works-in-Progress with Rebecca Herzig

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Wednesday, October 27, 2021

4:00-5:30 PM

Zoom Registration

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work.

At this session, we will hear from one of our remote visiting scholars, Rebecca Herzig, Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College on Science, Justice, and University Abolition.

This talk, part of a larger work-in-progress on US higher education, draws together left abolitionist approaches to the university and decolonial, anti-capitalist, and queer feminist critiques of science. Specifically, the talk takes up Boggs et al’s (2019) call to reckon with US universities’ complicity with settler colonial and racial capitalist regimes of accumulation by considering the distinctive positioning of contemporary “STEM,” ideologically and materially, within those regimes. Thinking Science & Justice within and beyond the carceral university, the talk suggests, requires struggle with academic science’s ongoing conditioning of twenty-first century racial-capitalist orders.

Rebecca Herzig is the author of several books, including Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America, and, with Evelynn Hammonds, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics. With Banu Subramaniam, Herzig co-edits the series, Feminist Technosciences. An essay from Herzig’s current project on higher education is forthcoming in Feminist Studies.

October 21, 2021 | Theorizing Race After Race

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Thursday, October 21, 2021

4:00 – 5:30pm

Zoom

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

At this session we’ll discuss our collective reading and writing projects.

Those interested in learning more or developing a dialogue or framework for grappling with race and racism in this so-called “post-racial” era, should join us. For the Zoom link, please contact Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) or Camilla Hawthorne (camilla@ucsc.edu).

The first two dialogues are linked below.

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

Unjustly Exposed

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Unjustly Exposed – an interactive documentary on COVID in prisons and jails.

In Fall 2020, UCSC Film and Digital Media Professor and Science & Justice Affiliate Sharon Daniel launched Unjustly Exposed (https://www.unjustlyexposed.com/), an interactive documentary on COVID in San Quentin prison. The interactive web project is a 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.”

Contact

Sharon Daniel (Film and Digital Media)

Undergraduate and Graduate Researchers – Fall 2021

Matei Galic, a Rachel Carson College affiliate, is a Politics and Legal Studies major. He is interested in constitutional law and in attending law school in the future, but before then wants to gain experience with political research on political demography and shifts in voting behavior.

Ching Jung Lai (Joyce), a College Nine affiliate, is a Human Biology undergraduate. She is enthusiastic about investigating the conditions of healthcare in jails and advocating the prisoners’ rights of receiving proper healthcare.

James Opilas, a College 10 affiliate, is a Legal Studies undergraduate. James hopes to advocate for underrepresented groups’ health and well-being. After graduating, he plans to pursue a higher education at law school, after which he plans on specializing in immigration law or criminal law.

Andrea Pastor, a Stevenson affiliate, is a Politics and Philosophy undergraduate. She is passionate about criminal justice reform & immigration rights so she plans to go to law school to help give a voice to those who have been stripped of their own.

Sophia Parizadeh, a College 10 affiliate, is a Politics undergraduate. Sophia is strongly interested in prison reform and advocacy for rights of incarcerated individuals. Sophia plans on attending law school after graduating from UCSC.

Undergraduate and Graduate Researchers – Summer 2021

Ching Jung Lai (Joyce), a College Nine affiliate, is a Human Biology undergraduate. She is enthusiastic about investigating the conditions of healthcare in jails and advocating the prisoners’ rights of receiving proper healthcare.

Sophia Parizadeh, a College 10 affiliate, is a Politics undergraduate. Sophia is strongly interested in prison reform and advocacy for rights of incarcerated individuals. Sophia plans on attending law school after graduating from UCSC.

Matt Sioson, a Cowell college affiliate, is a Legal Studies undergraduate. Matt serves as the director of the Walls to Bridges Book Project, a student-volunteer run non-profit which sends books to children on behalf of their incarcerated family members. In May 2021, Matt was recognized by the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation in support of his work with the project. Matt plans on attending law school after graduating from UCSC and also serves as President of the UCSC chapter of the Phi Alpha Delta pre-law Fraternity to help provide resources and strategies for his peers who are also striving towards a career in law.

Abram Stern (aphid), a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz in Film and Digital Media. Abram is an artist and scholar whose work analyzes media and metadata related to the oversight of public bureaucracies related to policing and surveillance while surfacing apparatuses of sense-making and that make this analysis possible and opacities that obstruct it.

Undergraduate Researchers – Winter and Spring 2021

Norhan Abolail, a Kresge affiliate, is a Psychology undergraduate minoring in Legal Studies. She is passionate about advocating for prisoners’ rights, abolishing the prison industrial complex, and eliminating unpaid labor in prisons.

Shana Salem, a Rachel Carson College affiliate, is a Feminist Studies and Cognitive Science undergraduate. 

Emily Schweitzer, a Porter college affiliate, is a Politics and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies undergraduate. After graduating, Emily plans to use her combined disciplines to pursue a field in immigration law, or abolition work. She is also currently in an internship working on DEI efforts at the UCSC Norris Center.

Matt Sioson, a Cowell college affiliate, is a Legal Studies undergraduate. Matt is strongly interested in criminal justice reform and has been volunteering with the Walls to Bridges Book Project to help keep children connected to their incarcerated loved ones. Matt plans on attending law school after graduating from UCSC. In May 2021, Matt was recognized by the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation in support of his work sending books to children with incarcerated family members.

Call for Participation

Prospective Student Opportunity | history of science, medicine, environment in the Global South

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The Department of History at UC Santa Cruz is recruiting two PhD students to begin in the fall of 2022 to pursue research on the histories of science, medicine, and/or the environment in the Global South. Applicants may specialize in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, East Asia, or indigenous communities across the globe. Applicants may – but need not be – from the geographies that fall within the broad category of the Global South as long as their research agenda is focused on the geographies described.

UCSC is known for its reputation as a center for the study of science (e.g. feminist science studies, multispecies studies, the study of race and genomics). The successful applicant will become part of an interdisciplinary community of scholars whose work focuses on questions of science, medicine, and the environment. In pursuing a research agenda situated in the Global South, they will have the opportunity to join researchers across the university and to participate in various transdisciplinary forums that include the Science and Justice Research group, the Center for Cultural Studies, the program in Global and Community Health, the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions, and events sponsored by the Departments of Politics, Sociology, History of Consciousness, Feminist Studies, Anthropology, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. In addition to university support, successful applicants will receive funding for language training and research from a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation on the theme of “The History of Science at the Interface of Biomedical and Environmental Concerns,” whose Principal Investigator is Jennifer L. Derr (History).

Further information about the history department’s graduate program can be found on their web page (https://history.ucsc.edu/graduate/index.html).

Please contact Jennifer L. Derr (jderr@ucsc.edu) or the Graduate Program Coordinator for the Department of History, Cindy Morris (morrisc@ucsc.edu) with any questions regarding applying or the graduate program.

Applications must be submitted no later than December 11, 2021.