News

Call for Participation

Spring 2020 Undergraduate Student Researcher Opportunity

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The Science & Justice Research Center is pleased to announce we are now accepting applications for a:

Undergraduate Research Fellowship

The award presents a paid research opportunity to first-generation, low income, under-represented groups, undocumented, and/or former foster youth. The award is intended as a stipend to support general living expenses, fieldwork or travel (as allowed by campus or state COVID-19 and shelter-in-place restrictions), presentation of work, and/or research. Undergraduate students currently enrolled in any department at UC Santa Cruz may apply. Preference will be given to applicants currently involved in the project. Established to increase inclusiveness and a sense of belonging in research, the award will support research conducted by one undergraduate student working with the Center project:

Theorizing Race After Race

The student should:
  • Be currently enrolled as an undergraduate student (any department) at UC Santa Cruz during Spring 2020; summer enrollment is not required.
  • Be currently working on the established Center project: Theorizing Race After Race.
The student will:
  • Help design and articulate the project’s future. This may include conducting interviews and transcription, analysis and editing of interviews; as well as tracking, collecting, and organizing articles about the social, political, and economic dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic written by prominent theorists of race, inequality, and STS.
  • Adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects if applicable.
  • Be offered a $1,500 Fellowship with the SJRC and listed on the Project’s webpage.
To Apply:

By 12:00Noon, Wed May 13, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) expressing interest, letting us know and sending the following:

  1. Your name, major, academic faculty advisor(s).
  2. Your resume/CV.
  3. Why you are interested in the project, how your personal/work/research/career goals would benefit from the fellowship, and how it would contribute to your overall sense of belonging at UC Santa Cruz.
  4. A short statement on your experiences at UCSC or involvement with the SJRC as related to topics addressed by the Project (including human subjects research, events attended, classes taken, etc.).
  5. Any ideas briefly describing potential research to be completed over Spring and Summer 2020.

Information on SJRC’s TRAR project can be found at: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2018/11/27/theorizing-race-after-race/

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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.

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.

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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

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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

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COVID-19: Resources for Teaching

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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.

Looking to teach about Covid-19 (coronavirus)?

Follow the conversation on Twitter via #teachthevirus, #CoronaVirusSyllabus, and #CoronaSyllabus

Open Access Reading Lists

#CoronaVirusSyllabus

Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project

UC Santa Cruz Spring 2020 Courses addressing COVID-19

SOCY 139T-02: Coronavirus and community: Sociological research on impacts and responses to the pandemic, will center around a recently released call for papers from Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Taking a social science perspective and building on students’ own interests, the course will provide support for independent research projects that explore COVID-19 from a variety of vantage points. For example, students might explore the ways that the pandemic has affected election politics, food security, access to health care for college students, quality of education, income inequality, continuity of work, social isolation, or a variety of other topics. Research could include exploration of news or social media coverage, online surveys, historical analyses, ethnography, interviews (conducted remotely), community mapping, or other methods. Students will choose their own research topic and conduct an original research project, working through the research design, data collection, analysis, and writing process through the course. Instructor: Rebecca London. Enrollment is by application and permission of the instructor.

SOCY 194: Living and Learning in a Pandemic: The Sociology of COVID-19, 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. The class will be part seminar and part group research. During the first two weeks of class, students will form research teams to focus on various aspects of the pandemic, and how different communities and sectors of society are responding. Key questions at the heart of our discussions will be: How are ‘health,’ ‘society,’ the ‘self,’ and ‘community’ being remade in this moment? Who and what has the authority and trust needed to remake these vital things, and effectively govern and respond to this global health crisis? Key themes will include: trust in science and government; new forms of stratification; medicalization; labor on the frontline (new vulnerabilities); the crisis of neoliberalism; a new social contract for public health and justice. Periodically, students will hear from guest lecturers who are on the frontlines of the pandemic, including labor organizers, public health professionals and scientists. Students will both produce independent research and works of public sociology designed to help share information with their communities about the pandemic. Prerequisites: SOCY121, SOCY 121G, an equivalent class, or have been admitted to the Science & Justice Internship/IS program by permission of instructor. Instructor: J. Reardon. Limited to 20 students.

SJTP Fellows Ian Carbone and Derek Padilla with undergraduate Artist-in-Residence Kiko Kolbi inside greenhouse

[postponed] Giving Day fundraiser for Science & Justice Training Program

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Wednesday, April 22, 2020 [postponed due to COVID-19]

All-Day

Join the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday April 22nd, for Giving Day, a 24-hour online fundraising drive!

Help us celebrate the 10 year anniversary of our Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) by supporting our graduate student researchers 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 marks the ten year anniversary of the internationally-recognized Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP). Now more than ever the training offered by the SJTP is critical to addressing the problems of our times: ecological destruction; data justice; growing inequalities. These are problems that are not the domain of one discipline or area of practice. They require working across fields of knowledge and practice. The SJTP provides the space and transdisciplinary tools and thought needed for social science, humanities, engineering, physical and biological science, and art students to collaborate to respond to core concerns of our times.

Our Science & Justice Training Program trains the next generation of researchers to maximize the public good 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 supports this critical dimension of the training of these future leaders of science and justice.

Over the last decade, our students have produced innovative research and projects. An SJTP graduate fellow from Biomolecular Science and Engineering worked with marine biologists and illustrators to self-publish the children’s book Looking For Marla (Buscando a Marla), a tale of diverse expressions of gender and sexual identity among marine creatures. Physics graduate students and artists came together to develop a novel solar greenhouse that highlighted problems of energy use and access to new material sciences in agriculture. They went on to secure tenure-track positions in which they found a route to incorporating justice into both their teaching and research. In these and many other instances, the SJTP is part of the next generation of researchers who seek to place justice at the heart of the best science and technology.

Share our Campaign for Justice!

Post on social media and ask your friends to join us on April 22 by making a gift on Giving Day to support the Science and Justice Training Program!

Thank you for making a more just world possible!

Call for Participation

Spring 2020 Graduate Student Researcher Opportunity

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The Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) will employ a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) with a 50% appointment for the Spring 2020 term; (22 hrs/week) appointment at Step 7. This appointment is funded by a grant through CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.

General Scope

In consultation with the Center Manager, and Director(s), the GSR will generate comparative data on the efficacy of graduate-level training in interdisciplinary feminist research for STEM scholars. In concert with colleagues in both the UC Santa Cruz-based Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) and at the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute, the GSR will collect and analyze data for a comparative cross-campus review of the two graduate programs whose curriculum makes questions of gender and social justice fundamental to STEM training. They will focus on the following major research questions:

  1. student recognition of societal context for research (including potential bias and societal needs)
  2. a culture of inclusion for those underrepresented in STEM fields
  3. interdisciplinary collaborations, and 
  4. the ability to accurately and appropriately use categories in research (e.g. gender, race). A comparative analysis of the two programs will help demonstrate the efficacy of course-based graduate training in interdisciplinary research and support future expansion of these programs across the UC and beyond.

Responsibilities may include: applying for IRB; foster collaboration and teamwork among the two programs; organizing and co-facilitating the review including reviewing Center and Institute Training Programs pedagogy (refer to: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/pedagogy/), conducting interviews with instructors / staff / past SJTP fellows and students currently enrolled in 268A during Winter 2020 and in Individual Studies during Spring 2020; assist with organizing two site visits (TBD one at UCSC, one at UCD); lead ethnographic and observational data collection, transcription and analysis of comparative data between the seminars after their completion; create infographics, outreach materials, reports based on findings; develop and contribute to Center communication channels (ie: blog posts, news articles) for sharing research findings on campus and to the broader public.

The GSR position will be filled by a graduate student who:

  • has not advanced to candidacy
  • has successfully completed the Science & Justice Training Program
  • is able to attend 268A on select Wednesday’s 9am-12noon; Rachel Carson College 301
  • is interested in applying questions of gender and social justice to STEM curriculum
  • can translate relevant trending news items into blog pieces to be posted as news items on the S&J website and shared on social media
  • can assist with writing SJRC curriculum and training practices to be listed on the webpages:  https://scijust.ucsc.edu/pedagogy/ and https://scijust.ucsc.edu/curriculum-training-practices/  

By March 18: Applicants should submit their CV and a 1-2 page application (to scijust@ucsc.edu) that presents:

  1. their ideas about cross-divisional and interdisciplinary STEM curriculum and training
  2. how their work/research/career goals would benefit from the position;
  3. what experiences they have that would make them good for this position.

The Hastings Center announces Jenny Reardon as a new fellow

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Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Science & Justice Research Center, was elected for informing scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology.

More information can be found in this campus news article: https://news.ucsc.edu/2020/01/reardon-hastings.html

More on the fellows can be found at: https://www.thehastingscenter.org/news/new-hastings-center-fellows-elected-3/