Past Events

November 09, 2022 | Monica Barra on Alternative Restorations

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Wednesday, November 09, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM

Earth & Marine Sciences A340 or Zoom Registration

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion with Monica Barra on alternative restorations. Special thanks to S&J affiliate faculty Tamara Pico (Earth & Planetary Sciences) for hosting.

Environmental restoration is typically understood as a means of returning a damaged ecosystem to a previously healthy, sustainable state. Yet the extent to which we consider restoration as an ecological and socio-cultural process connected to human politics and desires is largely underexplored across disciplines. Drawing from ethnographic research among scientists and frontline communities of color confronting large scale wetlands restoration in coastal Louisiana, this work-in-progress seminar explores ways of thinking about restoration as an ongoing process of reparation and repair that centers the needs and desires of Black and Indigenous coastal communities. Grounded in Black feminist science studies, Indigenous ecologies, and critical geographies of restoration, it asks: What does it mean to approach ecological restoration as a practice tied to cultivating self-determination for frontline communities? How can science and the restoration of natural geologic processes become an ally—as opposed to an obstacle—in securing the empowerment for these groups? What can we learn about the meaning of restoration from Black and Indigneous ecological practices?

Monica Patrice Barra is a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary background in the social sciences and humanities. Broadly, her work examines the relationship between race, inequality, and environmental change in the United States. Her first book, Good Sediment: Race, Science, and the Politics of Coastal Restoration examines the relationship between racial histories, science, and environmental change from the perspectives of Black coastal communities and scientists confronting Louisiana’s unprecedented wetland loss crisis. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the School of the Earth, Ocean & Environment at the University of South Carolina.

October 18, 2022 | Sawyer Seminar Inauguration: Tahir Amin on Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines

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Tuesday, October 18, 2022

7:00-8:30 PM (tickets)

Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320 Cedar St, Santa Cruz (map)

On Tuesday, October 18, the Inaugural Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Tahir Amin, will present at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center (320 Cedar St) in downtown Santa Cruz on Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines. Then, on Wednesday, October 19, the Center for Cultural Studies will host an in person reading group from 12:15-1:30pm in Humanities 1, room 210 on Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health.

More on the seminar can be found in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the project website.

Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines

The globalization of intellectual property in the 80s has coincided with some of the deadliest pandemics, epidemics and outbreaks, from HIV, hepatitis C, SARS, and recently COVID -19. Tahir Amin will take us through his and his organization’s journey over two decades fighting the ever growing intellectual property systems being pushed by the US, EU and their pharmaceutical companies that are blocking affordable access to medicines for billions of low income populations around the world.

Tahir Amin, LL.B., Dip. LP., is a founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit organisation working to address structural inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. He has over 25 years of experience in intellectual property (IP) law, during which he has practised with two of the leading IP law firms in the United Kingdom and served as IP Counsel for multinational corporations. His work focuses on re-shaping IP laws and the related global political economy to better serve the public interest, by changing the structural power dynamics that allow health and economic inequities to persist.

Amin and I-MAK have also put out a 10 point plan for the Biden-Harris administration to bring equity into the patent system, and their work is highlighted in the New York Times Editorial Board’s recent endorsement of patent reform. He is a former Harvard Medical School Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and TED Fellow. Amin has served as legal advisor/consultant to many international groups, including the European Patent Office and World Health Organization, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on intellectual property and unsustainable drug price.

October 12, 2022 | Meet & Greet

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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

4:00-5:30 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.

October 7-9, 2022 | Playing with Fire: a Hot Symposium

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Friday, October 7th – Sunday, October 9th

Digital Arts Research Center, DARC 108 (map)

Playing with Fire: a Hot Symposium Exploring the pleasures, perils & politics of fire through art, theory, practice, science and activism. 

Stay tuned to the E.A.R.T.H. Lab for more information.

Confirmed speakers and participants include:
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle: Keynote and Hosts
Roxi Power: Fire Poems
Becca Fenwick: Director, CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research: Presenting UCNRS Fire Data
Karin Bolender: Artist and Director of the Rural Alchemy Workshop (RAW)
Justin Hoover, Artist and Director of the Chinese Historical Society of America
Brandon Smith, Director of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRC)
Benny Fillmore, Washoe Elder and Hotshot Firefighter
Laura Smith-Fillmore, Washoe Language Translator and Artist
Helen Fillmore, Environmentalist, Hotshot Firefighter
Julie Weitz, Artist: Golem: A Call to Action + Prayer for Burnt Forests

April 13, 2022 | Works-in-Progress with Rachel O’Neill: the cultural politics of wellness

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Wednesday, April 13, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM

Humanities 2, room 450, OR 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 – in our first post-covid hybrid event!

At this session, we will hear from Visiting Scholar and Wellcome Trust Fellow Rachel O’Neill, an Assistant Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics who is undertaking research on ‘wellness’ culture in the UK, with a particular focus on food and nutrition. Professor O’Neill is very much concerned with the cultural politics of wellness, including its gendered, classed, and racialised dimensions.

Professor O’Neill’s project examines the development of ‘wellness’ as a novel cultural formation and new commercial development in the UK, related to but distinct from various ‘healthy living’ trends that have come before it, and closely connected with the aspirational economies of social media. Ethnographic in character, fieldwork to date has involved attending a variety of wellness events, including food festivals, product launches, and industry conferences, alongside interviews with those who actively participate or are otherwise imbricated in this sphere, from ordinary consumers through to Instagram influencers, dietitians, health coaches, medics and clinicians. One of the project’s key concerns is to chart how the rise of wellness coincides – temporally but also ideologically – with the decline of welfare in the UK, not least as growing emphasis is placed on lifestyle change as a public health measure amid the ongoing wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Rachel O’Neill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, specialising in feminist media and cultural studies. Her research centers questions of subjectivity and inequality, primarily in the contemporary UK context but with attention to transnational circulations of culture and capital. She is the author of Seduction: Men, Masculinity and Mediated Intimacy, published by Polity in 2018. Her work has appeared in journals including Feminist Theory, Men & Masculinities, and European Journal of Cultural Studies.

February 23, 2022 | Ruha Benjamin: 38th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation

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Wednesday, February 23, 2022

5:30 PM

Zoom Registration

Professor of African American studies and founding director of Princeton University’s Ida B.Wells JUST Data Lab, Ruha Benjamin, will speak at the 38th annual UCSC Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation, which will take place on Wednesday, February 23, at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public; those who wish to attend the convocation may register in advance.

Ruha Benjamin is professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab and author of two books, People’s Science and Race After Technology, and editor of Captivating Technology. Benjamin is currently working on a fourth book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want and writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.

More in this campus news article: Distinguished sociologist and founding director of Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab to headline MLK Convocation.

February 23, 2022 | Global divisions of health: bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing in Latin America

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Wednesday, February 23, 2022

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 visiting scholars, Abril Saldaña-Tejeda in a talk titled, “Global divisions of health; bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing in Latin America.”

This project asks how scientific and non-scientific communities of knowledge production in Latin America have historically perceived ethical concerns regarding human genome editing and other reproductive technologies (MSRTs). The project explores how current frameworks, concerns and discourses in the United States and Europe engage with (or contradict) those in Latin America. Through a series of seminars, workshops and regional meetings /in-depth interviews with some key stakeholders (geneticists, legislators, academics), the project explores the implications of a geographical and discursive distance between those places where bioethical frameworks are produced (global north) and those where the actual practice of human genome editing (research and trials) could be potentially happening.

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico, and focuses on the social determinants of health, genomics and postgenomics. She is currently exploring bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing and stem cell research in Latin America.

February 09, 2022 | Works-in-Progress with Melissa Eitzel

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Wednesday, February 09, 2022

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, Melissa Eitzel Solera, now with the Center for Community and Citizen Science at UC Davis.  Melissa will give us a brief report on the achievements from the work at SJRC as an NSF Science, Education, and Engineering for Sustainability postdoctoral scholar, some highlights of new collaborative projects at Davis, and then will workshop papers associated with the recently-published Modeler’s Manifesto.

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.