Past Events

May 14, 2025 | Book Talk! Erin McElroy on “Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times” (Duke University Press, 2025)

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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

5:00-6:30pm

Humanities 1, Room 202

The Center for Racial Justice Presents: Book Talk with Erin McElroy.

About the Book

In Silicon Valley Imperialism, Erin McElroy examines how Silicon Valley’s technocapitalist model has expanded globally, focusing on its manifestation in postsocialist Romania. McElroy reveals how this expansion perpetuates gentrification, racial dispossession, and economic inequality both in the San Francisco Bay Area and Romania. The book also highlights Romanian resistance movements that draw on socialist legacies to envision more equitable social alternatives, ultimately arguing that technocapitalism represents an unsustainable model of economic growth.

About the Author

Erin McElroy is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington and coeditor of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance.

May 13, 2025 | Contesting Techno Fascisms Now!

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

3:30-5:00pm

Namaste Lounge

This panel explores ways that fascism today manifests in unexpected sites and imaginaries, including visions of techno-utopia, nationalist movements for animal rights and calls to colonize outer space. The panelist assembled here will each take a keyword of the emergent fascist trends and think through ways to contest fascisms now.
 
Panel Participants:
  • Neda Atanasoski; Professor and Chair, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Maryland. Keyword: Eugenic Fascism
  • Felicity Amaya Schaeffer; Chair, CRES and Professor FMST, UCSC. Keyword: Eugenic Fascism
  • Neel Ahuja; Professor, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Maryland. Keyword: Environmental Fascism
  • Erin McElroy; Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington. Keyword: Techno-Feudalism

Hosted by the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department

May 09, 2025 | BME80G Series: Malia Fullerton on Ethical Implications of Legacy Data Storage and Use: the HGDP as Case Study

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Friday, May 09, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, May 09 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 Stephanie Malia Fullerton.

Ethical Implications of Legacy Data Storage and Use: the HGDP as Case Study

Much biomedical research, including genetic research, relies on easily accessible, individual level data on hundreds or thousands of research participants. As the need for larger and larger sample sizes grows and where prospective data collection is challenging, the norm is for investigators to draw on in silico genomic data derived from previous studies, available open-access or via various controlled-access data sharing mechanisms. One such open-access resource, the Human Genome Diversity Project collection, includes cell lines from 1063 anonymous individuals sampled from 52 populations around the world. The cell lines were developed from specimens collected decades prior to the collection being made available in 2002, and in partial response to controversy about prospective collection in Indigenous and marginalized communities. There is no extant record of what biospecimen donors were told about the ways that their samples would be used and very few of those involved in collecting the original samples are still living. Nevertheless, the cell line collection and extensive genetic data derived from the cell lines, including whole genome sequence information, continue to be widely used in many kinds of human genetic research. While evidence of individual harm is lacking, Dr. Fullerton will argue that ongoing open-access use of data of unclear provenance poses numerous risks for the broader genomics research community.

Malia Fullerton, Professor of Bioethics and Humanities, University of Washington School of Medicine.

Malia Fullerton, DPhil, is Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She received a doctorate in Human Population Genetics from the University of Oxford and later re-trained in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) research with a fellowship from the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Fullerton contributes to a range of empirical projects focused on clinical translational genomics including in collaboration with the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, the Polygenic Risk Methods in Diverse Populations (PRIMED) Consortium, and the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC).

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

May 09, 2025 | Academic Book Publishing w/ U of Minnesota Press

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Friday, May 09, 2025

11:00am-1:00pm

Humanities 1, Room 210 (registration) + Zoom (Registration)

Join Jason Weidemann, Editorial Director at the University of Minnesota Press, for a “bootcamp” workshop, geared toward graduate students, post docs, and early career scholars working on their first books. Together we’ll discuss information on the editorial process – how to talk to editors, revising the dissertation, and proposals.

Time will be left for sharing current works and what presses attendees might look into. Jason’s afternoon itinerary allows for additional one-on-one consultations to practice pitching works, etc. To schedule a time, contact: colleen@ucsc.edu.

Please register in advance. 

A Zoom option is also available, please register.

Jason Weidemann, Editorial Director

Jason Weidemann seeks manuscripts that make field-defining interventions in their core disciplines, contribute to interdisciplinary conversations, and communicate to readers beyond the academy, including activists, policymakers, community members, and general readers. His broad interests in Native and indigenous studies includes literary studies, the social sciences, legal studies, and education. He also acquires works in cultural and human geography, science and technology studies, anthropology, and sociology. Special interests include environmental politics, multispecies ethnography, urban studies, global flows of labor and capital, and Asian studies. Of specific interest are manuscripts that examine the social and racial dimensions of medicine and science. Proposals for translations from Japanese are welcomed, specifically science fiction and critical theory. He is also interested in manuscripts on the social aspects of video games and digital communication.

Subject areas: anthropology, Asian studies, media studies, geography, Native and Indigenous studies, sociology, science and technology

Series: Indigenous Americas, Diverse Economies and Liveable Worlds, Muslim International

Co-hosted by the UCSC Science & Justice Research Center, the Humanities Institute, and the Division of Graduate Studies.

May 08, 2025 | Public Research Action Network: Stand Up for Science; Stand Up for Knowledge – CANCELLED

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Thursday, May 08, 2025

6:00 – 7:30 pm 

Humanities 1, Room 210 (This month’s meeting has been cancelled).

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 have formed a group that will meet regularly with the slogan “Stand Up for Science; Stand Up for Knowledge”. The goal is 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. Meetings will take place once/month on the 2nd Thursday alternating between main campus and the Coast Science Campus.

Parking at the Coastal Science Campus is available with no permits after 5pm.

May 08, 2025 | Nauenberg History of Science Lecture with Jessica Riskin

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Thursday, May 08, 2025

5:00-7:00pm (registration)

Seymour Center, La Feliz Room

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was the Professor of Insects and Worms at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Living through the storms of the French Revolution and Napoleonic period, he founded biology, coining the term to name a new science devoted to all and only living things, and authored the first theory of evolution. Lamarck’s science was foundational to modern biology, yet its radicalism – he usurped God’s monopoly on Creation and re-assigned it to mortal, living beings – brought him and his ideas plenty of trouble. During Lamarck’s lifetime, Napoleon and his scientific inner circle hated him and did what they could to undermine him. Charles Darwin then adopted central elements of Lamarck’s theory, but after Darwin’s death, his most influential followers re-interpreted his theory to eradicate all traces of Lamarckism, rendering organisms once again the passive objects of outside forces, allowing room for an omnipotent God working behind the scenes. This conception of living organisms as passive in the evolutionary process has remained dominant since the turn of the twentieth century. In contrast, in Lamarck’s theory, living beings were active, creative, self-making and world-making. Elements of this very different conception of living organisms have recently, gradually been returning to mainstream biology in fields such as niche construction and epigenetic inheritance. The lecture will present Lamarck’s radical, embattled, and perhaps re-emerging approach to living things, their evolutionary and ecological agency, and the science that studies them.

Jessica Riskin is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University where she teaches modern European history and the history of science. Her work examines the changing nature of scientific explanation, the relations of science, culture and politics, and the history of theories of life and mind. Her books include The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick\ (2016), which was awarded the 2021 Patrick Suppes Prize in the History of Science from the American Philosophical Society, and Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002), which received the American Historical Association’s J. Russell Major prize for best book in French history. She is a regular contributor to various publications including Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

May 08, 2025 | Shazeda Ahmed on Artificial Intelligence (Re)Invents Itself: AI Safety and the Rise of Epistemic Monoculture

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Thursday, May 08, 2025

11:40am – 1:15 pm

Rachel Carson College 301 + Zoom (registration)

On Thursday, May 08 at 11:40 am, you are invited to gather in Rachel Carson College 301 or on Zoom for a talk with UC Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellow Shazeda Ahmed on Artificial Intelligence (Re)Invents Itself: AI Safety and the Rise of Epistemic Monoculture.

How did speculation about artificial general intelligence (AGI) transform from a niche thought experiment into a premise that policymakers and news media treat as an inevitability? Where did the idea of AI as an ‘existential risk’ to human life emerge?
The emerging field of “AI safety” has attracted public attention and large infusions of capital to support its implied promise: deployment of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems while reducing their gravest risks. Ideas from effective altruism, longtermism, and the study of existential risk are foundational to this new field. In this talk, Dr. Shazeda Ahmed shows how overlapping communities interested in these ideas merged to pursue what they refer to as “field-building,” and how this is sustained through mutually reinforcing community-building and knowledge production practices at four sites in this community’s epistemic culture: 1) online community-building through career advising and web forums; 2) AI forecasting; 3) AI safety research; and 4) prize competitions. She will then share preliminary findings from an interview study with members of the epistemic community who work on the “alignment problem” of attempting to align AI systems with human values. The dispersal of the AI safety epistemic community throughout industry, academia, and policy organizations ensures their continued input into global discourse about AI. Understanding the epistemic culture that fuses their moral convictions and knowledge claims is crucial to evaluating these claims, which are gaining influence in critical, rapidly changing debates about the harms of AI and how to mitigate them.

Co-hosted by the Sociology Department, the Science & Justice Research Center, and the UCSC Data + Ethics Working Group.

Shazeda Ahmed is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral (Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program) fellow at UCLA’s Center on Race and Digital Justice. She completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, and was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Shazeda has been a research fellow at Upturn, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) Institute, and NYU’s AI Now Institute.

Shazeda’s research investigates relationships between the state, the firm, and society in the US-China geopolitical rivalry over AI, with implications for information technology policy and human rights. Her work draws from science and technology studies, ranging from her dissertation on the state-firm co-production of China’s social credit system, to her research on the epistemic culture and knowledge production practices in the emerging field of AI safety.

May 07, 2025 | Dark Matter, Dirty Xenon, and the Limits of Laboratory Experiments

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Wednesday, May 07, 2025

3:00-4:30pm

Humanities 1, Room 210

On Wednesday May 7th, join Science & Justice Visiting Scholar Jaco de Swart for a talk, “Dark Matter, Dirty Xenon, and the Limits of Laboratory Experiments.”

Laboratory sciences crucially depend on experiments being clean. But what is clean? In this talk, I open up versions of clean relating to different ontological registers, and trace the material practices of cleaning as they are attuned to experimental specificities. My case is the XENONnT experiment in the Gran Sasso Mountains of Italy which is meant to detect dark matter in the form the hypothetical WIMP – the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. This experiment is clean when it is ‘free from signals that mimic dark matter’. In practice, such cleanliness has been difficult to achieve – soaps may be radioactive, steel may spread electronegativity, and humans are altogether dangerously filthy. And because, at least thus far, dark matter remains elusive, it is impossible to tell whether the meticulously cleaned detector is adequately clean. Additional cleaning efforts will make the detector sensitive to neutrino particles: a background that cannot be cleaned away. As the experimenters dread the possibility that this means their experiment will end in limbo, other physicists are now trying to detect other hypothetical dark matter particles with other kinds of experiments, requiring other kinds of cleanliness. The XENONnT experiment itself, meanwhile, has had to ensure that it does not interfere with environmental cleanliness, as per the demands of the surrounding society.

This work is done in collaboration with Annemarie Mol (University of Amsterdam).

Jaco de Swart is an AIP Helleman Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT’s Program in STS and Department of Physics, and a visitor at UCSC’s Science and Justice Research Center. He received his PhD at the Institute of Physics at the University of Amsterdam, was a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, and has held visiting positions at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on historical and anthropological studies of open problems in cosmology and he is currently writing a book on the history of dark matter under contract with MIT Press. De Swart is also a member of several physics collaborations to help develop social and environmental responsible research practices. He has a passion for science communication—appearing in PBS NOVA’s Decoding the Universe—and is bassist in the band X Raiders.

May 06, 2025 | Through the Image of the Animal: The Celluloid Specimen with Dr. Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa

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Tuesday, May 06, 2025

12:00-1:30pm

Communications Building, Classroom 130

Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Yet converting the bafflingly complex bodies and behaviours of nonhuman animals into scientific models is not a straightforward process. Film has been an essential, yet largely overlooked, element within this process. Often treated as purely transparent scientific recordings, the films produced out of animal research are in fact deeply formalist works that tested what film could capture through the image of an animal—variously proposing that they could visualise pure thought, the processes of history and culture, and the influence of environment on an organism. Drawing on his recent book, Schultz-Figueroa will speak and present filmed examples of primate insight and creativity, Alfred Kinsey’s experiments into animal sexuality, lab rats made to live in a model of a dystopian future, animal recreations of Marxist theory, and more. This work uncovers a dynamic field of scientific looking, where the distinctions between nature and culture are inscribed and reinscribed into animal images, generating concepts that broadly shaped the politics of immigration, labor relations, educational practice, and gender identity, well beyond the walls of the lab.

Dr. Schultz-Figueroa is Associate Professor of Film and Media at Seattle University. His research focuses on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. His book The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (University of California Press) was published in 2023. He is currently working on two projects, tentatively titled Against Encounter: The Problem of Organicism in Animal Documentary and Beastly Futures: Rightwing Animal Aesthetics in the 21st Century.

Hosted by the Center for Documentary Arts and Research and the Film & Digital Media Department.

May 02, 2025 | BME80G Series: Mohammed Mostajo-Radji on Consciousness and Neuroethics: Exploring the Boundaries of Personhood and Research

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Friday, May 02, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, May 02 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 Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji.

Consciousness and Neuroethics: Exploring the Boundaries of Personhood and Research

Ethics Consciousness remains one of the most profound and debated topics in neuroscience, philosophy, and bioethics. This presentation explores diverse perspectives on consciousness, from philosophical frameworks like dualism and monism to cutting-edge neuroscientific approaches using human brain organoids. As organoid research advances, ethical questions surrounding personhood, animal welfare, and the moral status of artificially grown neural structures become increasingly urgent. By examining case studies of human brain organoids, chimeric models, and neural restoration techniques, we will discuss the ethical challenges of defining consciousness and its implications for medical research, end-of-life care, and the future of neuroscience.

Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji, Assistant Research Scientist, UCSC Genomics Institute.

Dr. Mohammed Mostajo-Radji is an Assistant Research Scientist at the UCSC Genomics Institute, where his is part of the Braingeneers group, a multidisciplinary collective of geneticists, neuroscientists, and engineers focused on the human brain specification and function. His research explores neuronal specification and fate plasticity in the cerebral cortex using brain organoid models. Additionally, he leads the Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab, which develops cloud-based experimental science education technologies. Dr. Mostajo-Radji earned his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University and completed postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco Department of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

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