Past Events

October 24, 2025 | SJTP Informational Meeting

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Friday, October 24, 2025

2:00-3:00 PM

Zoom only (registration)

Join us for an Informational Meeting on our internationally recognized interdisciplinary Graduate Training and Certificate Program.

Our Science & 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 2026 / WINTER 2027 COURSE SERIES:

Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration, taught by Associate Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies Kriti Sharma is scheduled for Tuesday’s 1:00-4:00 pm. Science and Justice Research Seminar will be offered in Winter 2027. Enrollment in the courses 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 and have represented 24 departments.

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/.

October 15, 2025 | SJRC Meet & Greet

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Wednesday, October 15, 2025

4:00-6:00 PM

Oakes Academic Building, Room 231 + Zoom (register)

Please join us for a beginning of quarter social hour. In addition to a chance to celebrate the new academic year and enjoy each other’s company, we will welcome new members to our community, and welcome back others.

This will be a great chance for everyone to meet and foster emerging collaborations! Attendees are highly encouraged to bring and share their objects of study as it is a fun and helpful way to find intersecting areas of interest. Some previous objects shared have been: soil samples, a piece of the Berlin wall, bamboo, newly launched books, a stick, sugar, human blood, a human liver, and food.

Faculty or students interested in science and justice who want to learn more about SJRC collaborative projects, the Training Program, or would like to affiliate with Science & Justice are highly encouraged to join us in person or over Zoom.

October 12, 2025 | Playing with Fire! An Ecosexual Emergency

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Sunday, October 12, 2025

4:30PM

The Colligan Theater at the Tannery Arts Center (map)

As part of The Santa Cruz Film Festival, please join Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle at the Colligan Theater for their most recent documentary film, Playing With Fire! An Ecosexual Emergency.

The Santa Cruz Film Festival offers students a $5 General Admission ticket as well as $30 All Access Passes to all 35 screening events. The $5 student passes can be purchased through their ticketing site using the discount code STUFEST2025 at: https://www.goelevent.com/santacruzfilmfestival/e/PlayingwithFireAnEcosexualEmergency

About Playing With Fire! An Ecosexual Emergency

View the trailer at: https://vimeo.com/1088579894.

From the creators of the first queer environmental documentary feature films comes a hot new offering. The third chapter is their most epic and daring yet — fusing art, activism, and intimate storytelling in a touching journey through crisis, change, and renewal. When a firestorm rips through their redwood forest home, two artist-activists — Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle —emerge with a powerful message of love, resilience, and ecological hope, guided by a relationship with their magical peacock. Please join us after for a Q&A with Directors Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens!

Playing with Fire cover

July 31, 2025 | Public Research Action Network: Stand Up for Science; Stand Up for Knowledge

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Thursday, July 31, 2025

4:00 – 6:00 pm 

Coastal Science Building

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.

June 06, 2025 | BME80G Series: Tina Lasisi on Guilty by Genetic Association: Database Disparities, Family Structure, and the Racialized Reach of DNA Surveillance

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Friday, June 06, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, June 06 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 Tina Lasisi.

Guilty by Genetic Association: Database Disparities, Family Structure, and the Racialized Reach of DNA Surveillance

Forensic DNA databases disproportionately contain the genetic profiles of Black Americans, reflecting systemic biases in policing practices and inequitable application of DNA collection laws. Yet, the ethical implications of genetic surveillance extend beyond individual inclusion, implicating entire families and communities due to shared genetic ties. Historical differences in family structure—characterized by higher variance in family size among Black Americans—further compound this disparity. Larger family sizes increase genetic detectability through familial DNA searches, effectively expanding surveillance across genetically related individuals, even when those individuals are not themselves the initial target of investigation.This dynamic exemplifies how technologies initially designed under one scientific paradigm—identifying single individuals through a limited set of genetic markers—can evolve, gaining unforeseen capabilities like familial identification. As genetic data continues to accumulate in diverse databases, including commercial ventures such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies, the potential for future uses beyond original intentions increases dramatically. This underscores the need for proactive ethical reflection and policy development to anticipate and mitigate unintended disparities, ensuring that the accumulation and repurposing of genetic data does not deepen existing racial injustices or create new vulnerabilities.

Tina Lasisi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan.

Tina Lasisi is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. Her research integrates population genetics, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to understand human biological variation, particularly focusing on hair, skin, and pigmentation. Her current work examines the ethical and social implications of forensic genetics, particularly how systemic disparities in genetic databases contribute to racialized surveillance. In addition to her academic work, she is committed to public scholarship, engaging in science communication initiatives that promote a more accurate and nuanced understanding of human variation.

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

June 03, 2025 | THICK, SLIMY, SQUISHY, SQUIGGLY & GENERATIVE: A Conversation with Donna Haraway

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Tuesday, June 03, 2025

3:30-6:00pm

UCSC McHenry Library, Special Collections & Archives, 3rd Floor

On June 3rd, 2025, join the UCSC Special Collections & Archives for a conversation with Donna Haraway, in dialogue with three former students and long-time intellectual companions: Chela Sandoval (Associate Professor of Chicana Studies at UC Santa Barbara), Katie King (Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland), and Caren Kaplan (Professor Emerita of American Studies at UC Davis).

NOTE: Limited space available; plan to arrive early for seating. The conversation will start promptly at 4 pm and the event will continue afterwards with browsing in the archives.

Together with Haraway, these History of Consciousness alums will revisit the collaborative, interdisciplinary, and transformative modes of thinking that shaped their time at UCSC in the 1980s and ’90s—and that continue to animate their work today. Reflecting on this shared historical moment, the conversation will trace the intersections, evolutions, and generative entanglements of their ideas over time—and consider why collectivity, friendship, integrity, and humor remain vital tools for navigating what Haraway has called the “thick and slimy” urgencies of our present.

This event also marks the opening of an exhibition that showcases select materials from the Donna Haraway Papers, newly processed and available for research at UCSC’s McHenry Library.

Organized by the University Library’s Elisabeth Remak-Honnef Center for Archival Research and Training (CART) and 2024-2025 CART Fellow Annika Berry.

Read also this campus news article about Donna’s recent international awards: Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department, receives international honors.

May 30-31, 2025 | A Dawn and Two Dusks

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Friday-Saturday, May 30-31, 2025

5:30-8:30 pm

UCSC Arboretum

Co-conceived by sound and media artist Anna Friz (FDM) and choreographer Cid Pearlman (PPD), A Dawn and Two Dusks is a site-specific project taking place over three days on the grounds of the UCSC Arboretum in May 2025. Beginning with a dawn listening session on International Dawn Chorus Day (May 4), and continuing over two evenings of site-specific performance (May 30–31), the project proposes resilience and exuberant corporealities through interdisciplinary student, faculty and community collaborations, engaging the arts in community building and placemaking in response to urgent and unstable times.

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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Sunday, May 4, 5:15-7:00 a.m.: Dawn Chorus, a listening event
– Friday & Saturday, May 30–31, 5:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.: A Dawn and Two Dusks, a site-specific performance event
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Site information
– No registration required
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PARKING
– Directions
– UCSC Arboretum parking

May 30, 2025 | BME80G Series: Joanna Radin on Tales From the Crypt: Craniometry, Computers and Mass Culture in 1960s Cambridge

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Friday, May 30, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, May 30 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 Joanna Radin.

Tales From the Crypt: Craniometry, Computers and Mass Culture in 1960s Cambridge

This is a story about what happened when an enterprising Ivy league, pre-med majoring in anthropology encountered a machine he was told could, among other miracles, transform the spoils of generations of racial conquest into anti-racist science. It is a cautionary tale, not unlike the ones this pre-med would become best known for when he abandoned medicine for mass-market publishing and Hollywood. I narrate this account not as a thriller, adventure, or mystery, but as a bad romance. Or more specifically a necromance, born out of opportunistic relationships to the dead and mass cultural movements to refuse civil rights. The story unfolds between Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, MA in the 1960s. Specifically, collections of skulls at Cambridge University and the gender and racially segregated halls of Harvard College. It traces the intersections of Black Power and the power of computers—specifically the IBM 7090–as a strategy for intervening in entrenched ideas about human racial and sexual difference. I follow the consequences of this skullduggery into the present, after calls for the release of human remains from Anthropology’s crypts amidst the Black Lives Matter movement during the twilight of Affirmative Action.

Joanna Radin, Associate Professor of History of Medicine, Yale University,

Joanna Radin is Associate Professor of History of Medicine at Yale University, where she is a core member and Director of Graduate Studies of the Program in History of Science and Medicine. She also holds appointments in the Departments of History and of Anthropology and is an affiliate of the Programs in American Studies and in Religion and Modernity. She is the author of Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (Chicago 2017) and with Emma Kowal, the co-editor of Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World (MIT 2017). Her most recent publication is an essay in The Yale Review, “Is Celebrity Real?”

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

May 28, 2025 | Making a Time Capsule of the Present As We Meet the Future: Collective Creative Reflection with the Science & Justice Training Program Fellows

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Wednesday, May, 28, 2025

4:00-6:00pm

Oakes College Mural Room + Zoom (registration)

If we are packing a bag to move into the future of science, what values, practices, teachings and communities do we want to take with us from the past, what do we want to leave behind, and what do we want to make that we don’t already have?

In this event, fellows from the Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) came together to reflect on this question, and others: What happened over the rather extraordinary last year? What were our most urgent questions a year ago, and what are they now? What has changed?

The audience was then be invited into a creative storyboarding session, where we reflected in small groups on these same questions – what we would “pack” and leave behind as we move into the future, what science and justice means to us now – and collected these reflections into a “Time Capsule” documenting this moment of conflict and inquiry around science and justice.

The SJTP fellows are a highly interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students from across all five UCSC divisions who came together in Winter 2024 in the graduate seminar class “Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration” taught by Assistant Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies Kriti Sharma. The fellows have continued to incorporate learnings from the class into their research practices throughout the year and came together for this culminating event. More information about the SJTP can be found here.

Co-sponsored by the UCSC Women’s Center.

May 23-25, 2025 | California STS Network Retreat 2025

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Friday, May 23 – Sunday, May 25, 2025

5:00pm – 3:00 pm 

Nature Bridge

This year the California STS Network Retreat is returning to NatureBridge, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The retreat will be hosted by the UC Davis STS department and will be held from 5:00 PM on May 23rd – 3:00 PM on May 25th.

The STS Retreat is an opportunity to meet up with a mixture of faculty, postdocs and graduate students  interested and working in STS from across California. Sessions will be a mixture of mind-stretching STS related workshops, professionalisation workshops, and ‘theory walks’ in the beautiful headland landscape. Sessions are designed to provide attendees with the opportunity to get to know fellow scholars in a relaxed environment.

The cost is $200 including food and accommodation in bunk rooms. Transport to and from is not included.

If you have any questions or plan to attend the retreat, please email Bex Jones, UC Davis graduate student, at rljones@ucdavis.edu. Spaces will only be reserved and confirmed upon payment.