February 27, 2024 | Centering Equity and Justice in Research: What Will It Take?

February 26-27, 2024

Schedule varies

University of California Santa Cruz, Silicon Valley Campus

The UC Santa Cruz Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC), in collaboration with the LEED Team, is hosting a Kick-Off meeting and public dialogue which will take place at the UCSC Silicon Valley Campus in Santa Clara from February 26th to 27th 2024. The second day will feature two public facing sessions to gather thought leaders in the domain of science and society from the UCs, Stanford, Cal State and Silicon Valley to envision how to build more equitable research practices and communities. The day will end with a public reception at 5PM, followed by a panel discussion, Centering Equity and Justice in Research: What Will It Take? The panel will bring to our campus prime movers in efforts to create just and equitable research systems. Registration.

February 27th 2024 at 5:00pm – 7:00pm PST

In 1978, the Belmont Report issued by the U.S. National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects named justice as one of three core ethical principles that should guide research. Yet in the years that followed, researchers, policy makers, and ethicists paid much more attention to the other two principles–autonomy and beneficence–than to concerns about justice. This began to change a decade ago when social justice movements created new pressures on policy makers and scientists to attend to equity and justice. In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) led the charge to overthrow gene patents, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court ruling against Myriad, a major step towards health equity. Efforts to attend to issues of equality and justice accelerated further in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. In January of 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration appointed the first Deputy Director of Science and Society in its Office of Science, Technology and Policy (OSTP) and a year later released a bold vision to achieve equity in STEMM, followed by the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in October 2022. Most recently, in August of 2023 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) issued a report calling for the U.S. to center equity in health care innovation.

This panel brings together central architects and prime movers of these efforts to reflect on the progress that has been made and the work that lies ahead. Join us as we imagine this next chapter of the critical revolution to create just and equitable research systems that not only foster innovation, but create trustworthy sciences, technologies and societies.

Panelists

Ray Fouché, Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, immediate past Division Director of Social and Economic Sciences within the Directorate of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Evelynn Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, co-author of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech (2022).

Karen Miga, Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Director of the UCSC Genomics Institute, co-lead of the telomere-to-telomere (T2T) consortium and project director of the human pangenome reference consortium (HPRC) production center at UC Santa Cruz.

Kim TallBear, (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

Moderated by Jenny Reardon, Founding Director of the Science & Justice Research Center, UC Santa Cruz.

Refer to the LEED Project website for more information.

January 21-February 03, 2024 | SNU in the World Program Visit

January 21-February 03, 2024

IAS, 3rd Floor Conference Room + various locations on campus and in town

The SNU in the World Program, administered by the Office of International Affairs (OIA) at Seoul National University (https://oia.snu.ac.kr/snu-world-program-swp) is a university-led and government-funded initiative to train undergraduate students to be globally engaged scholars and leaders. The SNU in the World Program with the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) at UC Santa Cruz is coordinated through the Science & Justice Research Center’s Visiting Scholar Program with Doogab Yi, Associate Professor of Science Studies at Seoul National University (https://bit.ly/2P9b7Wi). The SNU in the World Program at UC Santa Cruz is one of five other programs selected for funding and focuses on Innovation, Science and Justice. Other SNU Programs include visits to Washington DC (public policy), Japan (sustainable development), and Australia (climate crisis).

In January and February 2024, the SJRC will host Professor Doogab Yi, 2 graduate students and 26 undergraduate students for two weeks. This years’ program will consist of a series of lectures with affiliated faculty at UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco, and Stanford along with field trips to the surrounding Bay Area museums, cultural centers, and sites of innovation such as Google. A welcome dinner at the Namaste Lounge, a screening of Richland (a film by Irene Lusztig), a live performance of Strata: A Performance of Topography, social gatherings, and a final student presentation over lunch are also planned. Select in-person lectures and activities allow for a few additional guests to join. People are encouraged to express interest by selecting which activities they are interested in attending by marking any that apply in this Google Form. Refer to the Winter 2024 Schedule and Participant Biographies.

For additional information contact Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) and Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Doogab Yi currently works on several projects related to the development of science and technology within the context of capitalism, such as the history of biotechnology, the relationship between science and the law, and the emergence of the technologies of the 24/7 self. He teaches courses in the history of modern science, science and the law, and environmental history.

January 17, 2024 | CANCELLED – Refiguring Worlds Through Local Voices? Epistemic Vulnerability in a Time of Climate Change in Kerala, India

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

4:00-5:30 PM

SJRC Common Room Oakes 231

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 visiting postdoctoral fellow Anna Bridel.

As climate change impacts intensify there are growing calls for alternative life-worlds to be imagined and brought in to being through the inclusion of local voices in environmental policymaking. At the same time, research has shown that platforming local environmental knowledge can often lead to an unexpected continuation of pre-existing relations of knowledge, politics and climate vulnerability. In this work in progress, Bridel will discuss ethnographic fieldwork from Kerala, India, where Cyclone Ockhi led to the death of over 200 fishers in 2017 but local fishing communities have been unable to influence dominant approaches to governing storm risk. In doing so Bridel will seek to develop the concept of ‘epistemic vulnerability’ as interactions between processes of making authoritative knowledge about the environment and vulnerabilization, to understand how fisher needs become silenced. Bridel gratefully welcomes any comments or feedback, especially on this analysis and the utility of epistemic vulnerability as a conceptual device.

Anna Bridel is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

November 08, 2023 | Algorithmic Bias

Wednesday, November 08, 2023

4:00-5:30 PM

SJRC Common Room, Oakes 231 + Zoom (Registration)

Join Science & Justice Affiliate Caro Flores (Philosophy) and Gabbrielle Johnson in a conversation with Science & Justice on algorithmic bias. We will gather in the SJRC Common Room, Oakes 231, and have Zoom available.

Gabbrielle Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. I work in Philosophy of Psychology (particularly perception and social cognition), Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Technology.

February 07, 2024 | Warren Sack and Nicole Starosielski on STS Approaches to Media Infrastructures

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

12:15 – 1:30pm

Humanities 1, 210

SAVE-the-DATE!

Join Warren Sack (Film & Digital Media) and Nicole Starosielski in a conversation with the Center for Cultural Studies and Science & Justice on STS approaches to media infrastructures. We will gather at the CCS in Humanities 1-210.

Nicole Starosielski conducts research on global internet and media distribution, communications infrastructures ranging from data centers to undersea cables, and media’s environmental and elemental dimensions. Starosielski is author or co-editor of over thirty articles and five books on media, infrastructure, and environments, including: The Undersea Network (2015), Media Hot and Cold (2021), Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure (2015), Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (2016), Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media (2021), as well as co-editor of the “Elements” book series at Duke University Press.

Starosielski’s most recent project, Sustainable Subsea Networks, is focused on increasing the sustainability of digital infrastructures. The project team has developed a catalog of best practices for sustainability in the subsea cable industry—the backbone of the global internet—as well as a carbon footprint of a subsea cable. Starosielski is also a co-convenor of the SubOptic Association’s Global Citizen Working Group.

Starosielski teaches classes and supervises projects on digital media, environmental media, media and communications infrastructures, media history and theory, and integrated media theory and production, among other areas.

November 08, 2023 | Giving Day

Wednesday, November 08, 2023

12:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Campaign Page

Join the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday, November 8th, 2023 for Giving Day, a 24-hour online fundraising drive!

Help support the next cohort of Science & Justice student researchers by giving to the Science & Justice Giving Day Campaign!

Thank you for making a more just world possible!

November 01, 2023 | Bias at Work? Artificial Intelligence in the Recruitment Process

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

4:00 – 5:30pm

SJRC Common Room, Oakes College 231 +  Zoom (Registration)

SAVE-the-DATE!

Join Science & Justice Affiliated faculty Warren Sack (Film & Digital Media) and guest Roger Søraa in a conversation with Science & Justice on artificial Intelligence in the recruitment process. We will gather in the SJRC Common Room, Oakes 231, and have Zoom available, register here.

How is Artificial Intelligence (AI) being used and impacting recruitment processes? This talk provides insight from a European research project on AI-enhanced recruitment processes and what sociotechnical dangers that can lead to. AI is increasingly being used to find, assess, and hire candidates for a wide variety of jobs, but with upcoming regulations and strict privacy concerns, what can we expect from AI in Human Resource Management (HRM) practices? Is AI helping, helpful, or making us helpless? Who is the ideal candidate for a job, and how are (European) companies dealing with issues connected to diversity and discriminatory biased hirings? This STS-based analysis from Norway will aim to shed some light on this for an American audience. The research is drawn from the EU-funded project BIAS, more information available at www.biasproject.eu.

Dr. Roger Andre Søraa is an Associate Professor in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His main research interests are the digitalization and robotization of society, especially on work and health, its epistemological consequences, and inclusion and diversity issues. He leads the research group “Digitalization and Robotization of Society” (DigiKULT). He is the author of AI for Diversity, published by Routledge in 2023, and co-author of the forthcoming Digitalization: Societal Change, User Perspectives, and Critical Thinking. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6800-0558

November 15, 2023 | Works-in-Progress with Anila Daulatzai

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

4:00-5:30 PM

Oakes 231 + 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 postdoctoral fellow Anila Daulatzai on her ethnographic fieldwork with UNICEF, WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance in Switzerland towards her research on global health architectures and polio.

Anila Daulatzai is a political and medical anthropologist. She has taught in prisons, and in universities across three continents. Her past and current research projects look at widowhood, heroin use, and polio through the lens of serial war and the US Empire in Afghanistan, and Pakistan. She has published articles in Jadaliyya, Al-Jazeera, several academic journals, and edited volumes and is a contributing member to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, since 2014. She is currently completing her book manuscript provisionally titled War and What Remains. Everyday Life in Contemporary Kabul, Afghanistan. At UCSC, Anila is a postdoctoral fellow in the history department working on the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine,” a project co-led by SJRC faculty affiliate Jennifer Derr (History) and SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon (Sociology). More information can be found at: https://raceempirebiomedicine.sites.ucsc.edu/.

October 11, 2023 | SJRC Meet & Greet

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

4:00-6:00 PM

SJRC Common Room Oakes 231 + Zoom Registration

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.