Research Projects

SNU in the World Winter 2023 Participant Bios

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ABOUT The SNU in the World Program Director

Doogab Yi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Science Studies at Seoul National University and Director of The SNU in the World Program with SJRC at UCSC on Innovation, Science and Justice (Winter 2023, 2024, 2025). His broad research interests lay in the intersection between science and capitalism in the 20th and 21th centuries, and he is currently working 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. Learn more at: https://doogab.wixsite.com/doogabyi

ABOUT UCSC PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order)

CHESSA ADSIT-MORRIS is a Graduate Student in Visual Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Chessa is a curriculum theorist, assistant director of the Center for Creative Ecologies housed within the department of the History of Art and Visual Culture at UC  Santa Cruz, and the Graduate Student Researcher for the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC). She writes widely on the intersection of curriculum studies, posthumanism(s), ecological thought and SF, and is the author of “Restorying Environmental Education: Figurations, Fictions, Feral Subjectivities” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) (open access copy). Her current teaching, research and publications focus on transdisciplinary research and pedagogy, with particular reference to visual studies, socially engaged art, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, ecological thought and speculative fiction. Chessa works with SJRC specifically on the Leadership in the Ethical and Equitable Design (LEED) of STEM Research initiative.

CHRIS BENNER is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies and the Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship at UC Santa Cruz. He currently directs the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the Institute for Social Transformation. His research examines the relationships between technological change, regional development, and the structure of economic opportunity, focusing on regional labor markets and the transformation of work and employment. He has authored or co-authored seven books (most recently Solidarity Economics, 2021, Polity Press) and more that 75 journal articles, chapters and research reports. He received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

DENNIS BROWE is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. Dennis’ work lies at the intersections of medical sociology, science & technology studies (STS), public health, sexuality and gender studies, and feminist theory.

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 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 and History Professor Jennifer Derr and SJRC Founding Director and Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon. More information can be found at: https://raceempirebiomedicine.sites.ucsc.edu/.

JAMES DOUCET-BATTLE is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. James is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. James applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities. James is currently SJRC’s Director of Teaching who oversees the Science & Justice Training Program.

CAMILLA FORSBERG is a Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. The Forsberg lab focuses on stem cell fate decisions of the blood system. Hematopoietic stem cells are responsible for generating a life-long supply of mature blood cells. Each stem cell is capable of making all of the mature blood cell types with widely different functions: some blood cells specialize in carrying oxygen, others fight off infections, and still others prevent bleeding in the process of blood clotting. How does a stem cell decide which cell type to give rise to? Are these decisions made by the stem cell itself, by its descendant multipotent progenitors, or both? How are these decisions dysregulated to cause cancer and other disorders? We tackle these questions from multiple angles – by in vivo and in vitro experimental approaches, by focusing on specific molecules as well as analyzing global changes. Ultimately, we want to understand the molecular determinants of hematopoietic stem cell fate decisions so that we can prevent and treat both genetic and acquired disorders of the hematopoietic system, including anemia, autoimmune disease, leukemias and lymphomas.

ANNA FRIZ is an Associate Professor of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. Anna creates media art, sound and transmission art, working across platforms to present installations, broadcasts, films and performances. Her works reflect upon media ecologies, land use, infrastructures, time perception, and critical fictions. 

LINDSAY HINCK is a Professor of Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology at UC Santa Cruz. The Hinck lab is interested in understanding how epithelial cells assemble into organs during development, and how the reverse process occurs during cancer when cells disassemble and metastasize to inappropriate locations. Recently, we have been focusing our studies on a family of positional cues, called Slits, which were originally identified in the nervous system where they direct the construction of elaborate networks of neuronal connections. Currently, the laboratory has projects in three areas: building an organ; stem cells and self-renewal; and loss of growth control and cancer.

CHRISTINE HONG is an Associate Professor of Literature and is the current chair of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, director of the Center for Racial Justice at UC Santa Cruz. Christine’s book, A Violent Peace: Race, Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific was published by Stanford University Press in 2020. Along with Deann Borshay Liem, Christine co-directed the Legacies of the Korean War oral history project. Christine serves on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute, an independent research and educational institute, and co-edit the Critical Ethnic Studies journal with Neda Atanasoski. Christine also co-edited a two-volume thematic issue of Critical Asian Studies on Reframing North Korean Human Rights (2013-14); a special issue of positions: asia critique on The Unending Korean War (2015); and a forum of The Abusable Past on “White Terror, ‘Red’ Island: A People’s Archive of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising and Massacre.” Christine specializes in transnational Asian American, critical Korean, U.S. war and empire, and comparative ethnic studies.

YOUNGEUN KIM is a graduate student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. YoungEun works on sound studies, diaspora studies, ethnomusicology, decolonial studies, audio technology, and ethnographic research.

KAREN MIGA is an Assistant Professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department at UC Santa Cruz and Associate Director at the UCSC Genomics Institute. Karen is the co-lead of the telomere-to-telomere (T2T) consortium and the project director of the human pangenome reference consortium (HPRC) production center at UCSC. Karen’s research program combines innovative computational and experimental approaches to produce the high-resolution sequence maps of human centromeric and pericentromeric DNAs. The Miga lab aims to uncover a new source of genetic and epigenetic variation in the human population, which is useful to investigate novel associations between genotype and phenotype of inherited traits and disease. More information can be found at: https://migalab.com/ 

TAMARA PICO is an Assistant Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. The Pico Group’s goal is to better understand past ice sheets and their stability. The Pico group uses ice sheet- solid Earth interactions as a lens to improve ice sheet and sea-level reconstructions on glacial timescales. By leveraging unconventional sea-level datasets, including ancient landscapes, we aim to target knowledge gaps on ice sheet growth and decay.

JENNY REARDON is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

JEREMY SANFORD is a Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. The Sanford Lab’s goal is to illuminate post-transcriptional networks coordinated by RNA binding proteins. To achieve this they employ genomic, biochemical and computational methods to identify cis-acting RNA elements recognized by a complete family of phylogenetically conserved, essential RNA binding proteins in a comprehensive manner.

DOROTHY R. SANTOS is a Ph.D. candidate in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. Dorothy is a Filipino American storyteller, poet, artist, and scholar whose academic and research interests include feminist media histories, critical medical anthropology, computational media, technology, race, and ethics. 

COLLEEN STONE manages all public relations and administrative aspects of the Science & Justice Research Center, its projects and grants, curriculum, training and visitor programs. Additionally, Colleen is the department assistant for Sociology, supporting faculty and student driven research.

ABOUT UCSC Programs and Research Initiatives (in alphabetical order)

The UCSC Center for Open Access Splicing Therapeutics (C.O.A.S.T.) is a collaborative effort between Science & Justice and Professors Jeremy Sanford (MCD Biology) and Michael Stone (Chemistry) to accelerate the discovery of precision therapies for rare diseases by exploiting the chemical language of ribonucleic acid (RNA), while addressing the questions of ethics and justice raised by this novel area of research. Learn more in undergraduate Aisha Lakshman’s (Sociology, Statistics) blog post on “Normalizing Slow Science,” in which she drew on work with C.O.A.S.T. and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Using her two disciplines to interpret datasets to demonstrate social problems and catalyze social change, Lakshman has since expanded her post to a senior thesis, receiving honors, on “Normalizing “Slow Science” in the Case of RNA-Therapeutics: Research Pace and Public Trust in Science.“

The Everett Program for Technology and Social Change (video) develops young leaders who use the technical, educational, and research resources of the university to work directly with communities, empowering people to develop practical solutions to persistent problems. Everett’s educational philosophy is rooted in a holistic approach that engages students in linking theory, practice and personal development. Students are supported in making these connections through hands-on work contributing to social justice and environmental sustainability with community partners. Students work towards obtaining a major concentration or minor in Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies (GISES) administered through the Department of Sociology. Meet the Fellows. 

The Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” is a project co-led by SJRC faculty affiliate and History Professor Jennifer Derr and SJRC Founding Director and Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon. More information can be found at: https://raceempirebiomedicine.sites.ucsc.edu/.

SJRC’s LEED Initiative—a national and international collaboration—aims to clarify, review, and revitalize the roles and value of engaging bioethicists and scholars in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts in STEM research. More information can be found at: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/research/projects/leed/ 

The Stem Cell Journal Club is hosted by The Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells (IBSC) at UC Santa Cruz which aims to support and advance stem cell research by promoting interdisciplinary discoveries in biology, engineering, and information science. More information is here about the Stem cell agency (CIRM) that funds research training programs at UC Santa Cruz with IBSC and SJRC.

The UCSC SUSTAINABILITY OFFICE strives to foster a culture of diverse, equitable and inclusive sustainability at UC Santa Cruz. They actively engage students, staff, faculty and community members through education, leadership development, institutional change and behavioral transformation. They build partnerships with students and community members to improve UCSC’s environmental performance, seeking to model the way for how large institutions can work collaboratively to solve some of the world’s biggest environmental and social justice challenges. Students also work to advance inclusive sustainability and are leading our efforts at advancing education around the intersectionality between social and environmental justice. Read more about the effort toward the full decarbonization and electrification of the campus in this campus news article.

ABOUT NonUCSC PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order)

JULIE HARRIS-WAI is Associate Professor, Institute for Health & Aging in the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Harris-Wai’s research focuses on examining the social and ethical factors influencing how and why genomic technologies are translated from the research setting into clinical care and the impact these technologies have on health disparities and underserved communities. The goal of her work is to identify methods for incorporating community and stakeholder perspectives into policy decision-making to improve the appropriate translation of research into clinical and public health programs. Dr. Harris-Wai is the Associate Director of the Kaiser Permanente/UCSF Center for Excellence in Research on Translational Genomics and Ethics (CT2G). She is currently working on an R21 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to use deliberative community engagement methods to inform policy decisions about the future of California’s Newborn Screening Program.

DONGOH PARK is a Senior Policy Advisor at Google’s Trust and Safety Team, where he is responsible for creating and overseeing policies for Chrome Browser and the web ecosystem to protect user safety and privacy. Prior to joining Google six years ago, Dongoh worked as a policy researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Korea and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information. He also served as an information and communication officer in the Republic of Korea Navy. Dongoh holds a Ph.D. in Social Informatics from Indiana University, Bloomington and currently lives in the Los Angeles area with his family.

KAUSHIK SUNDER RAJAN is Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory. Dr. Rajan’s work lies at the intersection of Medical Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), with commitments to social theories of capitalism and postcolonial studies. Dr. Rajan’s presentation is part of a presentation to campus through the Sawyer Seminar on “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” co-led by SJRC faculty affiliate and History Professor Jennifer Derr and SJRC Founding Director and Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon.

FRED TURNER is a Professor of Communication at Stanford University and serves on the SJRC Advisory Board. Fred is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of five books: Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America (with Mary Beth Meehan); L’Usage de L’Art dans la Silicon Valley; The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties; From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism; and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory. Before coming to Stanford, he taught Communication at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He also worked for ten years as a journalist. He has written for newspapers and magazines ranging from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine to Harper’s.

TIFFANY WISE-WEST is the Sustainability and Climate Action Manager for The City of Santa Cruz and a founding graduate fellow of the Science & Justice Training Program at UC Santa Cruz. Tiffany is a licensed professional civil engineer with nearly 20 years of experience in municipal infrastructure planning, design and project management. Tiffany received her BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Purdue University and specialized in water, wastewater and solid waste systems for the first half of her career. In the second half of her career, after a stint teaching mathematics and environmental education to secondary students, Tiffany earned her MA and PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz where she focused her academic research on the techno-economic and policy elements of sustainability, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and issues at the water and energy nexus. Tiffany specializes in negotiating and managing public-private-academic partnership projects aimed at advancing green infrastructure, policy and programming. She leads the award-winning Santa Cruz GreenWharf initiative and currently works on state and regional climate and energy issues in her roles as Senior Environmental Engineer at EcoShift Consulting, the City of Santa Cruz’s Climate Action Outreach Coordinator, and the District 2 Commissioner on the Santa Cruz County Commission on the Environment.

SNU in the World Winter 2023 Schedule

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Professor Yi along with 26 undergraduate and graduate students will visit Santa Cruz beginning Sunday, January 29th for a two week visit! Select in-person lectures and activities allow for a few additional guests to join. Express interest by selecting which activities you are interested in attending by marking any that apply in this Google Form. Note: times will be posted as confirmed.

All activities are in-person unless otherwise noted.

Day 1 Sunday, January 29: Free Exploration + Arrival to Santa Cruz

  • Travel to Santa Cruz, check into hotel, sightsee and explore as time permits.

Day 2 Monday, January 30: UC Santa Cruz

  • 11:00 am – 12:30 pm. Welcome Lunch + Lecture with JENNY REARDON: “Welcome and Introduction to the Science & Justice Research Center: Origins of Science & Justice and Current Activities” [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm. Lecture: KAREN MIGA, JAMES DOUCET-BATTLE, and JENNY REARDON: “Personalized Medicine, Biotechnology, Justice, and Inclusion” [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm. Welcome Dinner with SNU + UCSC Participants and Organizers [Location: Oakes College Provost House].

Day 3 Tuesday, January 31: UC Santa Cruz

  • 10:00 am – 11:00 am. Lecture: JAMES DOUCET-BATTLE: “Training the Next Generation of Scientists and Engineers.” A conversation through a compounded STS, ELSI/bioethics, and health disparities lens, with allied reference to SJRC’s UC-HBCU work with North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and the UCSC Genomics Institute. [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • 12:15 pm – 1:30 pm. Lecture with C.O.A.S.T.: JEREMY SANFORD and JENNY REARDON: “Open Access Splicing Therapeutics: for rare diseases and the questions of ethics and justice raised by this novel area of research.” [reading: 2021 Lakshman “Normalizing Slow Science.”] [Location: Biomed 300; map].

Day 4 Wednesday, February 01: UC Santa Cruz + Free Exploration Downtown Santa Cruz

  • 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm. Sawyer Seminar with KAUSHIK SUNDER RAJAN on Ethnographic Trans-formations: Cases, Life Histories, and Other Entanglements of Emergent Research [Location: Humanities 1, Room 210; map].

Day 5 Thursday, February 02: Free Exploration San Francisco

  • 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Visit de Young Museum
  • Free Exploration at Golden Gate Park
  • 5:00 pm Dinner at San Francisco Piers
  • 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Visit Exploratorium After Dark exhibit
  • 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm Return to Carousel Beach Inn

Day 6 Friday, February 03: Silicon Valley 

  • Stanford University campus tour
  • 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Computer History Museum
  • 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Lunch with DONGOH PARK
  • 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Google Office Tour with DONGOH PARK (Senior Policy Advisor, Global Policy & Standards, Trust & Safety).
  • 2:30-3:30 pm Lecture: DONGOH PARK: “Google’s Trust and Safety Operations”
  • 6:30 pm Dinner with SNU OIA DIRECTORS [Location: TBD near Carousel Beach Inn]

Day 7 Saturday, February 04: San Francisco

  • Morning: Free Exploration
  • 1:00 pm. “Welcome To UC San Francisco” by JULIE HARRIS-WAI. [Location UC San Francisco, Mission Bay Campus, Fisher Banquet West room]
  • 1:15 pm – 2:15 pm. Discussion with FRED TURNER (Stanford University) on “Arts and Innovation”. [Location UC San Francisco, Mission Bay Campus, Fisher Banquet West room].
  • 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm. DENNIS BROWE (UCSC), Introduction to the Just Biomedicine “SF Third Street Project.”
  • 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm. “SF Third Street Walking Tour” with JENNY REARDON and DENNIS BROWE. [Begins at UCSF Mission Bay campus].

Day 8 Sunday, February 05: Free Exploration

  • 8:30 am – 10:00 am. Carousel Beach Inn → San Francisco MoMA
  • 10:00 am. Free Exploration of San Francisco MoMA
  • Ragnar Kjartansson, *The Visitors* (“Revisiting ‘The Visitors’: An Oral History of Ragnar Kjartansoon’s multimedia masterpiece”)
  • TBD Option 1: Bike across Golden Gate Bridge (rentals: Sports Basement in the Presidio, Blazing Saddles, Golden Gate Bridge Bike Rentals).
  • TBD Option 2: walking tour of Haight-Ashbury, Castro District, and Twin Peaks
  • TBD Option 3: laze away at North Beach coffee houses, browse through books at City Lights Bookstore
  • 6:30 pm. Dinner at Haight-Ashbury
  • 8:00-9:30 pm. San Francisco → Carousel Beach Inn

Day 9 Monday, February 06: UC Santa Cruz

  • 10:30 am – 12:00 pm. Lecture: ANNA FRIZ, YOUNGEUN KIM, DOROTHY SANTOS: “Arts and AI Innovations” [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • 1:30 pm. Lecture and Lab Visit with TAMARA PICO: “Geoscience and Colonialism” [Location: Earth & Planetary Sciences A308, map].
  • 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm. Lecture: CHESSA ADSIT-MORRIS: “Leadership in the Equitable and Ethical Design (LEED) of STEM Research.” [reading: 2023. Reardon et all. “Trustworthiness Matters: Building Equitable and Ethical Science” CELL] [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm. Conversation + team dinner with the UCSC EVERETT PROGRAM FELLOWS and CHRIS BENNER [Location: room 47, Social Sciences 2 Building, map]

Day 10 Tuesday, February 07: UC Santa Cruz

Day 11 Wednesday, February 08: UC Santa Cruz

Day 12 Thursday, February 09: UC Santa Cruz, Farewell + Free Exploration

  • 10:00 am. SNU Student FINAL PRESENTATIONS + Farewell Lunch with SNU + SJRC organizers [Location: The Oakes College Mural Room].
  • Travel from Santa Cruz to the Bay Area for Free Exploration

Day 13 Friday, February 10: Free Exploration in the Greater Bay Area

  • Field trip to TBD

Day 14 Saturday, February 11: Free Exploration in the Greater Bay Area

  • Field trip to TBD

November 2-7, 2022 | Sawyer Seminar: Alberto Ortiz-Diaz

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Wednesday, November 02, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM 

Zoom only (Registrations: 11/02 Presentation, 11/07 Reading Group)

On Wednesday, November 02 at 4:00pm, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Alberto Ortiz-Diaz, will present online over Zoom (register). Then, on Monday, November 07, we will host a reading group at 4:00pm over Zoom (register).

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.

“Carceral Care: Health Professionals and the Living Dead in Colonial Puerto Rico’s Sanitary City, 1920s-1940s”

Using an array of primary sources, this talk explores the early history of the Río Piedras sanitary city or medical corridor, a transnationally and imperially inspired built environment and complex of welfare institutions (a tuberculosis hospital, an insane asylum, and a penitentiary) constructed and consolidated on the margins of San Juan by Puerto Rico’s colonial-populist state between the 1920s and 40s. Within and across these institutional spaces, health professionals contributed to the production of medicalized scientific knowledge and cared for and socially regulated racialized, pathologized Puerto Ricans. Penitentiary “living dead” (incarcerated people), in particular, were subjected to research and received treatment, but also provided health labor that put them at risk while powering the sanitary city and nurturing its inhabitants. Crucially, however, some prisoners managed to exploit the unthinkable openness of the complex, revealing in the process that the living dead could only be buried alive for so long.

Alberto Ortiz Díaz is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington, and currently a Larson Fellow at the Kluge Center, Library of Congress. His first book, Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in March 2023.

October 19, 2022 | Sawyer Seminar Inauguration: Tahir Amin on Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health

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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

12:15-1:30 PM 

Humanities 1, Room 210 (in person only)

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 (tickets, map) on Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines. Then, on Wednesday, October 19, the Center for Cultural Studies will host Amin 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.

Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health

With billions of people in low-income countries still without Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics, this pandemic has exposed the neo-colonial structures of the political economy of intellectual property system and the World Trade Organization (WTO). This talk will delve into an often overlooked history of  how the WTO TRIPS Agreement came into existence and the impact it has had on the global South over the 27 years it has been in force – and how it will impact future pandemic preparedness and climate change.

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 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.

Black and red abstract lines painted on a gray brick wall

National Science Foundation grant will help establish ethics and equity best practices for emerging forms of science and technology

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Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon, founding director of the Science & Justice Research Center, won a nearly $400,000 National Science Foundation grant to study ethics and equity in the design of science and engineering projects. The project team will spend the next two years reviewing prior scholarship and examining case studies in the fields of genomics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to analyze how ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) and diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) are incorporated into science.

Learn more in this campus news article: National Science Foundation grant will help establish ethics and equity best practices for emerging forms of science and technology

If you would like to take part in or contribute to the LEED project, email Jenny Reardon.

JOB Announcement | UC Santa Cruz is hiring for a Mellon Sawyer Postdoctoral Scholar

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POSITION OVERVIEW

Position title: Mellon Sawyer Postdoctoral Scholar

Salary range: Commensurate with qualifications and experience, initial annual salary is $70,000. Minimum annual salary rates are made based on the individual’s Experience Level, which is determined by the number of months of postdoctoral service at any institution. See current salary scale for Postdoctoral Titles at https://apo.ucsc.edu/compensation/salary-scales/index.html
Percent time: Postdoctoral Scholar appointments are full-time
Anticipated start: Position available to start between 7/1/22 – 9/1/22.
Position duration: One year. The total duration of an individual’s postdoctoral service may not exceed five years, including postdoctoral service at any institution. Under limited circumstances, an exception to this limit may be considered, not to exceed a sixth year.

APPLICATION WINDOW

Open December 22nd, 2021 through Wednesday, Aug 31, 2022 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Department of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral scholar appointment to support an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” scheduled for the 2022-23 academic year, under the direction of Associate Professor Jennifer Derr. The seminar working group will be led by Professors Jennifer Derr (History) and Jenny Reardon (Sociology). Through public lectures, scholarly talks, and a regular interdisciplinary reading and discussion group, the seminar will interrogate the intersections among race, empire, and the environment, and their significance in the theory, practice, and structure of American biomedicine. The seminar’s geographic frame is that of the American biomedical empire, a formation that includes the United States as well as those places formed by and encircled in the networks of American (biomedical) imperial influence. Within these geographies, race has functioned as a determinant of environmental exposures with deleterious impacts on human health. It also has been a central component of the environmental imaginaries that undergird the theory and practice of medicine and the provision of care. This seminar will approach the history and study of biomedicine from the vantage point of its racialized environments with an eye towards how these critical engagements might be marshaled to produce a more equitable practice of medicine. It is rooted in the proposition that to fully grasp the significance of race in medicine, we must probe how race is made material through environmental imaginaries, practices, and material entanglements, and how these in turn undergird and shape American biomedicine.The Mellon Sawyer postdoctoral scholar position is a twelve-month appointment and includes salary, health benefits, moving expenses, and a research budget. The start date of the appointment is flexible but must begin between July 1 and September 1, 2022. The employee will be hosted by the Department of History. They will be expected to be in residence at UC Santa Cruz, to participate in all aspects of the Sawyer Seminar, and to develop their own scholarship through the format of the seminar.We welcome applications from scholars in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences in any region of the world that falls conceptually within the territories of American biomedical empire, which include but are not limited to the geographies of American Empire. The chronological focus of the postdoctoral scholar employee’s research should be the twentieth and/or twenty-first centuries.Applications are accepted via email to Jennifer Derr at jderr@ucsc.edu. All documents and materials must be submitted as PDFs.Required Documents/Materials

  • Letter of application that briefly summarizes your qualifications and interest in the position.
  • Curriculum vitae, which must include the names and contact information for two professional references. The hiring unit will contact the references of those applicants who are under serious consideration.
  • Statement of contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion (not to exceed two pages): address your understanding of the barriers facing traditionally underrepresented groups and your past and/or future contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion through research and professional or public service. Candidates are urged to review guidelines on statements (see https://apo.ucsc.edu/diversity.html) before preparing their statement.
  • Statement of research (not to exceed two pages) describing how your research relates to the themes raised by the seminar
  • Writing sample (20-25 pages)

Full consideration will be given to applications completed by March 1, 2022. Applications received after this date will be considered only if the position has not been filled.

History Department: https://history.ucsc.edu/

QUALIFICATIONS

Basic qualifications (required at time of application)

See additional qualifications.

Additional qualifications (required at time of start)

Ph.D. (or equivalent foreign degree) in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. Ph.D. must be in hand at the time of appointment.
Help contact: jderr@ucsc.edu

CAMPUS INFORMATION

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status. UC Santa Cruz is committed to excellence through diversity and strives to establish a climate that welcomes, celebrates, and promotes respect for the contributions of all students and employees. Inquiries regarding the University’s equal employment opportunity policies may be directed to the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 or by phone at (831) 459-2686.Under Federal law, the University of California may employ only individuals who are legally able to work in the United States as established by providing documents as specified in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Certain UCSC positions funded by federal contracts or sub-contracts require the selected candidate to pass an E-Verify check (see https://www.uscis.gov/e-verify). The university sponsors employment-based visas for nonresidents who are offered academic appointments at UC Santa Cruz (see https://apo.ucsc.edu/policy/capm/102.530.html).UCSC is a smoke & tobacco-free campus.If you need accommodation due to a disability, please contact Disability Management Services at roberts@ucsc.edu (831) 459-4602.UCSC is committed to addressing the spousal and partner employment needs of our candidates and employees. As part of this commitment, our institution is a member of the Northern California Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (NorCal HERC). Visit the NorCal HERC website at https://www.hercjobs.org/regions/higher-ed-careers-northern-california/ to search for open positions within a commutable distance of our institution.The University of California offers a competitive benefits package and a number of programs to support employee work/life balance. For information about employee benefits please visit https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/compensation-and-benefits/index.html

As a condition of employment, you will be required to comply with the University of California SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Vaccination Program Policy. All Covered Individuals under the policy must provide proof of Full Vaccination or, if applicable, submit a request for Exception (based on Medical Exemption, Disability, and/or Religious Objection) or Deferral (based on pregnancy) no later than the applicable deadline. For new University of California employees, the applicable deadline is eight weeks after their first date of employment. (Capitalized terms in this paragraph are defined in the policy.)

VISIT THE UCSC WEB SITE AT https://www.ucsc.edu

JOB LOCATION

Santa Cruz, California

ABOUT

Call for Participation

Summer 2022 | Undergraduate Student Researcher Opportunity (PAID)

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The Science & Justice Research Center and the Sociology Department are now accepting applications for a:

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow

This position and the research conducted is supported by a Faculty Research Grant provided by the Committee on Research from the University of California, Santa Cruz awarded to Principal Investigator James Doucet-Battle (Assistant Professor of Sociology) under the project titled, “Building Diversity in Sociology and Science and Technology Studies”. The opportunity was established to support summer research conducted by a UCSC Sociology Undergraduate Student.

In consultation with Colleen Stone at the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) and the PI (Doucet-Battle), one undergraduate student researcher enrolled in the UCSC Department of Sociology will be awarded $2000 to develop and implement the proposed research project.

The researcher will: 1) assist developing and conducting a local study that compiles campus literature, conduct interviews and collect updates from relevant parties and those leading campus efforts, and helps identify novel mechanisms for strengthening diversity in Sociology and STS in our department, 2) assist with organizing a one day workshop to brainstorm/develop a 1-year action plan to implement at UCSC. Responsibilities may also include: assisting with organizing, planning, and co-facilitating groups and assist with documentation, reviewing research relevant to proposed themes and areas of inquiry, preparing for and conducting interviews, transcription and data analysis, creating outreach materials and reports based on findings or events including infographics, charts, and diagrams, developing and contributing to available communication channels (ie: blog posts, news articles) for sharing research findings. 

More information about the “Building Diversity in Sociology and Science and Technology Studies” project can be found in the plan narrative for the UC-HBCU small grant initiative submitted in 2022 (pending award). 

The Student Must:

  • Be currently enrolled as an undergraduate student at UC Santa Cruz and declared as a Sociology major (all Sociology majors may apply; enrollment during summer is not required).
  • Be interested in strengthening diversity and participation in sociology, science and justice, and science and technology studies.

The Ideal Candidate:

  • Will be interested in continuing the project beyond Summer 2022 and through the 2022-2023 academic year.
  • Will be interested in using this research as part of a senior thesis which could be overseen by Doucet-Battle. 
  • Will meet the eligibility requirements for the UC Santa Cruz Building Belonging Program.

The Student Will:

  • Be awarded $2000 [$1000 distributed at the beginning of summer and $1000 upon submitting an end-of-summer report. Equals a 25% effort (10 hrs/week) from July 1 – Sept 30 at $15 per hour].
  • Be offered a summer fellowship with the SJRC and listed on the Project’s webpage.
  • Adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects, if applicable.
  • Work closely with a team to develop clear goals, research methods, and intended outcomes with an outline of items to be completed over Summer 2022.
  • Submit an end-of-summer report of project status and/or research findings with suggestions for next steps.

To Apply:

By Monday, May 23 at 12 Noon, 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 and how your learning/research/career goals would benefit from the fellowship.
  4. Your experiences with the project topic, if any.
  5. Any ideas briefly describing potential research to be developed or completed over Summer 2022.

Theorizing Race After Race

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In the post-WWII, post-fascist, post-nationalist moment, a dominant story developed both within and outside the academy that ‘race’ had no meaning or value for understanding human biology. Despite the so-called end of ‘race’ over the last several decades, scholars continued to track the subtle manner in which racial thinking continued under the cover of culture, religion, population and ethnicity. Today, however we see an overt return to race, a return facilitated and mediated by novel forms of science and technology: genomics; machine learning; algorithmically driven media platforms. From David Reich’s New York Times op-ed arguing that there is a genetic basis to ‘race,’ to renewed interest in Charles Murray and The Bell Curve, several prominent public intellectuals have sought to buck what they perceive as the ‘politically correct dogma’ of race as a social construction. At the same time, members of the alt-right are embracing genomics research to support their claims for a ‘white ethnostate.’ ‘Theorizing Race after Race’ seeks to develop a framework for grappling with these reconfigurations of race after the supposedly ‘post-racial’ moment. Our goal is to understand how knowledge of the genome and ideas of human difference circulate, taking on different meanings across diverse historical-geographical contests.

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press)

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press)

On March 12th 2019, Faculty and students of SJRC’s Theorizing Race After Race group, and Jenny Reardon’s graduate seminar Sociology 260: Culture, Knowledge, Power discussed the overt return to race facilitated and mediated by novel forms of science and technology: genomics; machine learning; algorithmically driven media platforms with Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble.

On March 12th 2019, at the Kresge Town Hall, Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble discussed her new book, Algorithms of Oppression, and the impact of marginalization and misrepresentation in commercial information platforms like Google search, as well as the implications for public information needs.

On January 19th 2020, SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon and Herman Gray speak about race in America as interviewed by Chris Benner, Director of the Institute for Social Transformation, on KSQD.

On January 22nd 2020, the community joined us for a vibrant, stimulating, and challenging conversation on Racial Reconciliation and the Future of Race in America with Alondra Nelson (President, Social Sciences Research Council) and Herman Gray (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz) as moderated by Jenny Reardon (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Science & Justice Research Center, UC Santa Cruz).

On November 20th 2020, the first installment of a series of Dialogues on COVID-19 and Racism of the SJRC’s Theorizing Race After Race working group launched on the UCHRI Foundry website! Check out Black Geographies of Quarantine: A Dialogue with Brandi Summers, Camilla Hawthorne, and Theresa Hice Fromille.

On September 22nd 2021, the second installment of a series of Dialogues on COVID-19 and Racism of the SJRC’s Theorizing Race After Race working group launched on the UCHRI Foundry website! Check out Metrics, Enumeration, and the Politics of Knowledge in Estimating Racial Health Disparities in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Dialogue with Alexis Madrigal, Co-Founder of The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project. In this dialogue, SJRC affiliate faculty and Assistant Professor of Sociology Jaimie Morse, with Film & Digital Media graduate student Dorothy Santos, and UCSC undergraduate student alum Aitanna Parker (as part of the TRAR Collective) are in dialogue with Alexis Madrigal, journalist and co-founder of The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project that operated from April 2020 to March 2021. The Atlantic is a major media outlet that produced alternative statistics on COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths during the first year of the pandemic, acting as a watchdog on the federal government’s data and reporting. The Atlantic was among the first media outlets to report racial health disparities through its COVID Racial Data Tracker before the CDC released data by race. In this dialogue with Alexis Madrigal, we explore the politics of knowledge production and how data can advance racial justice. What follows is an edited, condensed transcript of the dialogue.

On March 9th, 2022, the third installment of the series, Dialogues on COVID-19 and Racism, by UC Santa Cruz Science & Justice Research Center’s Theorizing Race after Race (TRAR) working group launched on the UCHRI Foundry website! In this third dialogue, Race, Contagion, and the Nation,1 which took place during August 2021, graduate students Lucia Vitale and Dennis Browe, and undergraduate Sophia Parizadeh, hosted a Zoom video panel with four scholars from around the Americas discussing how COVID has revivified or changed the existing debates about race and racism in different trans/national contexts. The panel was structured around six main questions, which Sophia asked and are marked in bold. Find more information about relevant contexts that shaped the topics discussed during the full dialogue.

These are part of an ongoing effort to develop frameworks for grappling with race and racism in this purportedly “post-racial” era. The COVID-19 pandemic provides particularly striking examples of the ways in which a post-racial moment has not yet come to pass, undermining a teleology already disrupted by the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While the pandemic is replaying old narratives in new guises, we contend that it also affords a real-time global critique of narratives of race and science. Dynamics of COVID-19, and narratives about it, differ across national, state, city, and zip code lines. Placing these differing narratives in conversation, we suggest, disrupts 20th- and 21st-century epistemes that have clung strongly to narratives of race and pathology, race and biology. To make these differences manifest, and to develop a critique that attunes us to the racial justice questions of this moment, in this forum TRAR is curating a series of dialogues between scholars working in different geographic and political contexts about different themes at the intersection of COVID-19 and racism—from the politics of numbers and race-based data collection, to questions of race, space, surveillance, and quarantine.

Help us realize more dialogues! Consider donating to the SJRC to support our undergraduate and graduate student researchers.

Contact

Camilla Hawthorne (Sociology), Jenny Reardon (Sociology)

Graduate Researchers

Dennis Browe is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. Dennis’ work lies at the intersections of medical sociology, science & technology studies (STS), public health, sexuality and gender studies, and feminist theory.

Theresa Hice Fromille is pursuing her PhD in Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, with designated emphases in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies. Her dissertation project draws insights from Black Geographies and youth studies to investigate how Black youth from the United States construct their racial identities during international travel.

Dorothy R. Santos is a PhD student in the Department of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. Dorothy is a Filipina American writer, artist, and educator whose academic and research interests include feminist media histories, critical medical anthropology, technology, race, and ethics.

Lucia Vitale is a PhD student in the UC Santa Cruz Politics department and interdisciplinary global health scholar whose work explores the right to healthcare and fragmented primary health systems in Latin America. She uses citizenship to frame inclusion and exclusion practices occurring at both the transnational scale in global health policy, and at the national scale in social policy. You can read her most recent publication here: “COVID’s Co-Pathogenisis,” and find her on Twitter here: @luciavitale

Undergraduate Researchers

Joshua Harjes (Biology, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies)

Sophia Parizadeh is a College Ten affiliate, first-year undergraduate student majoring in Politics. She is interested in understanding systemic racial inequality and how it has been magnified within the pandemic. She hopes to shed light on other social justice issues and work towards forming solutions to today’s problems.

Alum Researchers

Aitanna Rene Parker, a Kresge affiliate, is a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz, with a BA in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and a BS in Technology and Information Management. She plans to use her technical abilities for social good. Aitanna is currently working with the Science & Justice Research Center, looking at datasets to understand how Covid is negatively impacting racialized populations in the United States. She wants to continue this work in graduate school.

Past Meetings

Theorizing Race After Race: Race, Contagion, and the Nation: A Dialogue with Pedro Valdez, Abril Saldaña-Tejeda, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, and Jenny Reardon

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Over the past year SJRC’s Theorizing Race After Race (TRAR) research cluster has produced a series of dialogues grappling with COVID-19 and Racism. The first two dialogues, hosted on UCHRI’s Foundry site, cover Black geographies of quarantine and Metrics, enumeration, and the politics of knowledge.

During August 2021, TRAR student researchers hosted a third dialogue with four scholars from around the Americas discussing how COVID-19 has revivified or changed existing debates about race and racism in different trans/national contexts. This dialogue has been posted to The Foundry as Race, Contagion, and the Nation: A Dialogue with Pedro Valdez, Abril Saldaña-Tejeda, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, and Jenny Reardon. 

Below you will find information about relevant contexts that shape the topics discussed during the full dialogue.

As a UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) report from 2020 summarizes, xenophobia and racism toward migrant workers around the world has grown since the start of the pandemic, attributed to fears of contagion and charging migrants with spreading the virus. For example, just as the U.S. ‘weaponized COVID against migrants’, the Dominican Republic’s long history of structural racism against Haitians as well  its and the U.S. governments’ deportations of Haitians during the past year threatened not only the general health of these migrants, but also caused a surge in COVID-19 cases in Haiti, already suffering from an unstable public health infrastructure.

Further intertwined with the COVID-19 pandemic has been mass protests (both in the U.S. and internationally) against racism, white supremacy, and police brutality sparked, in part, by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in Spring 2020. Much discussion ensued about the need to understand white supremacy and racism as factors creating structural threats to health. As one open letter signed by over 1,200 U.S.-based public health professionals and community advocates put it, “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”

In an effort to think through these developments, the dialogue ranged widely with panelists offering their uniquely situated takes. First, panelists were asked about the possibilities and impediments to the collection of COVID data based on ‘race’ in their countries (the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the United States). Next, they discussed strategies to move away from the biologizing and racializing discourse on pre-existing conditions and COVID-19 vulnerability that become tied to certain racial/ethnic groups. As one strategy, Dr. Saldaña made the case for treating social-structural forces, such as racism and poverty, as pre-existing conditions themselves. The discussion covered the utility of seeing whiteness as a race and the ways the power and privilege of whiteness becomes invisibilized even as it leads to harmful effects on others – for example, white U.S. citizens vacationing in Mexico without getting tested for COVID-19.

The dialogue further covered the function and role of borders, and understandings of the border as a racialized and carceral space of containment and expulsion. Panelists discussed how legacies of colonialism have gutted many national and transnational public health responses to the pandemic, thus failing to ensure adequate health and safety for those most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. Panelists concluded the dialogue by discussing ways the meaning of racial justice has shifted trans/nationally since early 2020, and how they are grappling with these developments as they move forward with their work and projects.

Contributors

Dennis Browe is a Sociology PhD student who works across medical sociology, science and technology studies, and feminist theory. He studies the rise of precision medicine in the U.S., as well as the field of biogerontology, which links questions of population aging to the biomolecular study of aging in cells and organisms.

Sophia Parizadeh is a second-year undergraduate student at UC Santa Cruz, majoring in Politics. She is interested in understanding systemic racial inequality and how it has been magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic. She hopes to shed light on other social justice issues and work towards forming solutions to today’s problems.

Dr. Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology at UCSC and Founding Director of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Dr. Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is an anthropologist at the Universidad de Guanajuato in central Mexico whose work includes scholarship on mestizaje and health patterns of non-communicable diseases and healthcare access. 

Dr. Felicity Amaya Schaeffer is a Professor of Feminist Studies at UCSC who works on science and technology studies, border identities, indigeneity, and citizenship regimes, especially related to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pedro Valdez is affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, who currently holds a position at a national migration research institute.

Lucia Vitale is a PhD student in the UC Santa Cruz Politics department and interdisciplinary global health scholar whose work explores the right to healthcare (see “COVID’s Co-Pathogenisis”). She uses citizenship to frame inclusion/exclusion practices occurring at both the transnational scale in global health policy, and at the national scale in social policy. You can find her on twitter.